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Travel
A Slow Boat to Moscow
1. St. Petersburg.
The last thing I expected on an Aeroflot flight, on my first visit to Russia, was Lancashire hotpot. An old plane, a dodgy flight, ex shot-putter stewardesses called Olga perhaps - Lancashire hotpot no. So, as usual, the stereotypes are dashed almost before the whole thing has started. And it was fairly decent hotpot.
I was flying to St. Petersburg to join a sort of mini-cruise to Moscow which would take in a large chunk of Russian countryside, several towns and numerous villages on the way. It was the first time I’d opted for a guided tour, I normally spurn such touristy trips in favour of my own adventures, accompanied solely by a map and my camera. This particular outing however looked like a very good way to discover bits of Russia that it would otherwise be very difficult to reach, and I felt like treating myself. When I first discovered the trip I had no idea that the two cities were linked by waterways, and it transpired that only a serious bit of communist flooding had achieved this at the expense of some formerly picturesque rural villages, complete with 14th century churches whose towers now stick forlornly out of this watery tribute to Stalinist re-construction. Mostly, though, the journey is via a series of otherwise natural lakes and rivers starting with the Neva and ending with the Volga.
After my surprisingly smooth and well-fed flight, the stereotypes did make a brief appearance at St. Petersburg airport in the shape of the passport and visa officials. They all wore brown, fifty year old uniforms and sat in drab, dingy booths and were undoubtedly all called Boris. Their job was to take as long as possible to scrutinise each document and then very reluctantly let you in. Or possibly not. Trying to smile at them was like smiling into a black hole – it presumably went in, but absolutely nothing came back out. You can’t help feeling while you’re standing there that you’re being secretly watched and scrutinised by the KGB even though they don’t exist any more – well at least not under the same name. For once it’s quite a relief to get to the baggage hall and relax over a warm conveyor belt.
At last I emerged into the arrivals area and began to look round for the rep who was to escort me and my fellow travellers to our berth in St Petersburg. We were greeted by a woman in her late fifties who introduced herself as Galina. She was very smiley and cheerful even though she must have been waiting for ages for the passport people to finish with us, and despite the fact that she had probably been doing this all through the season (my trip was near the end of it). I found out later that there were deeper reasons for her enthusiasm and that this was not just the shallow display of a holiday rep.
With her list of travellers complete, Galina led the dozen or so of us out of the airport and onto a waiting coach. I was excited by what was about to be my first glimpse of real life Russian roads, houses and people. It was dark however, and the road seemed to run mainly through tree-lined fields, so my attention was very quickly absorbed by Galina’s first speech to us. Standing at the front of the coach with her microphone in the time honoured manner, much of what she had to say was functional, but her style, delivery and humour were impressive. Then she told us that she was going to be our guide for the whole trip, that she had been a guide since 1960, and that we were going to have a marvellous journey. I for one absolutely believed her.
We reached our boat after about 30 minutes and were soon processed by the staff, shepherded to our cabins and told to report to the restaurant post haste as it was now getting quite late. The boat, or ‘river vessel’, as the tour company refer to it, was the 400 foot MV Surkov, which holds 280 passengers and about 100 staff. It actually has two restaurants, two bars, a library, a sauna, a shop and a clinic. Despite the urge to explore all this I did as I was told and went rather gratefully to eat, then managed to find one of the bars, situated pleasingly close to my cabin, and decided that the exploring could wait until the next day.
As it turned out, I didn’t get much of a chance for boat exploration for the next couple of days as Galina had our time pretty much mapped out for us. This was the time we were to spend moored in St. Petersburg before setting sail for Moscow. Galina lives in and adores St. Petersburg and she makes sure that all the visitors in her charge get a very good appreciation of it. The delights of the hermitage or winter palace are well known and the city centre generally is a very graceful, beautiful and spacious affair which sprawls around the wide Neva river. Canals further add to the watery nature of things and, even in much harder times, I doubt if the locals have ever wanted for a drink. A lot of the people walking around the centre were better dressed than us – there were certainly no outward signs of poverty here, though obviously the city has the usual hidden problems that cities always have.
To her credit, Galina also made sure that we saw the suburbs which were no grimmer than many of those in the UK, in fact there were often well kept flower gardens around the bases of the tower blocks. We also saw some of the huge old communist administration blocks which still loom here and there flaunting their brutalist architecture in what seems like a direct affront to the beauty of the churches and the old royal palaces, which I suppose it was. One in particular has a giant statue of Lenin outside which now confronts one of the main roads and, with his raised arm, makes him look like he’s hailing a taxi. On our way round Galina told us about the siege of Leningrad (as St. Petersburg was known in the Communist era) when the city held out for months against the Germans in WW2 and we began to get a sense of her depth of feeling for her home. We also began to get the sense that the Russians demonise and ridicule the Germans in very similar ways to the British – this was not a cultural parallel I had quite expected.
My favourite trip in St. Petersburg was to the Summer Palace. It’s located just to the south of the city and is right on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, as it’s known. Even in the height of summer I think you’d need at least three wet suits on to survive going for a swim in it. The palace however is glorious, though restored after what the Germans did to it. It was built by Peter the Great in an effort to out-do the Palace of Versailles, and in many respects I think he succeeded. The ballroom in particular is magnificent and you can very easily visualise one of Tolstoy’s ball scenes taking place. The pièce de resistance, however, waits outside in the gardens. In a tiered series of descending terraces and stairways, adorned with dozens of gold statues, is the most magnificent display of fountains I’ve ever seen. It goes from the palace right down to the sea. Now I’m not usually bothered with garden type stuff, but this is no ordinary Charlie Dimmock water feature. If you stand at the bottom of the main part of the display and stare up at it with the palace in the background it just takes your breath away. All you can see and hear are the jets of water spraying in every direction, playing around the steps and the statues. If you’re a photographer you’ll know what I mean when I say that it makes you go into a frenzy of clicking, trying to cover it from every angle in an effort to capture it for your own version of posterity.
Galina led us through these first few days cramming in every bit of information she could muster in an effort to acquaint us with her city as much as possible. She would often get told off for holding up other guided groups while she spoke to us. She wanted us to be first to set off in the mornings so that we would get to our destination before the others and have more time. In most holiday guides this would be decidedly irritating, but she had the infectious knack of spreading her enthusiasm to us – we almost felt part of her family in such a short space of time – this was her considerable talent. I first talked to her one to one when we were in the Russian National Gallery and had both gone to the bookshop after the tour. I wanted a book as a memento of the gallery and she wanted a book on Impressionism in English, so she could improve her commentary. We helped each other choose and had a good old chat about art as we went off to the café for tea. She was claiming, half joking, half serious, that impressionism was invented in Russia and only copied by the French artists after they’d seen it on their travels – she hoped to prove it one day by the dates of some of the Russian canvasses. I also found out that she lived in one of the tower blocks we’d passed with one of her daughters and that she desperately wanted to visit Rome so that she could see the Vatican Galleries. She was also very grateful for the life that being a guide had given her in comparison to many of her friends and family. Although she’d had to toe the official line for many years and be careful about what she said, it had kept her in touch with the outside world through the Iron Curtain years and she’d been able to visit Britain and America because of the friends she’d made. She’d even worked for a time in India, as an interpreter, though I never found out who for. Now she had the privilege, as she said, to be paid for showing people around her beloved city.
The time had come that evening for the boat to set sail on the river and us onto a number of very different experiences. We moved off with the sun setting over St. Petersburg, creating a rather romantic slant on the harbour which really isn’t all that picturesque, the skyline of the main part of the city being out of view. A little gaggle of relatives of the crew had gathered to wave them off. A number of passengers, determined to get into the cruise spirit, waved madly back at them as though they were their own and about to embark on a trans-Atlantic adventure on the QE2. I was more interested in what lay ahead and peered beyond the bow in the ever increasing dusk, but was only greeted by the rather drab banks and industrial buildings on the outskirts of the city. It was time to start getting to know some of my fellow passengers a little better.
I include the crew in this of course, as these were the Russian people we were going to be most exposed to, albeit rather tourist hardened people. The main crew members I spoke to most during the trip were the waitress at my table and three women who ran the smaller of the two bars. The waitress, Katya, looked about sixteen but could have been older. She was confident and fiery and didn’t really seem to have much time for the passengers, most of whom must have seemed ancient to her. My table was shared by Charles, a retired bank manager, and his wife Lena, and Dave, also retired (early), and Sally, a couple from Covent Garden who were rather less conventional. Katya was efficient and kept our table well enough, but most of the time she seemed to regard us more as aliens than fellow human beings which is probably a trans-national characteristic of teenagers. Although she obviously spoke some English she never seemed to want to stray from the words printed on the menu, and attempts at chatting were hurriedly brushed aside.
The bar staff, however, were older, all in their twenties, and rather more communicative. In charge was Olga, about 28, who rather re-formulated my opinion of what people called Olga are like and whose English was fairly good. Nadia was the youngest, around 20, and though she spoke a little English, German was her main second language. Half way between, age wise, was Yulia (yes Yulia, not Julia as Olga kept reminding me), who only appeared to speak Russian, though she obviously understood my orders for coffee and beer well enough. Olga kept me informed about the places we were visiting, painting a quick picture for me in advance, and also enduring my probably pointless requests to write down various Russian words even though I wasn’t familiar with the Russian alphabet. It obviously made a change from being chatted up. All three seemed very pleasant, though I dread to think what comments they made in their short but frequent exchanges in their native tongue as various passengers came and went. They were also all partial to being treated to a Bailey’s, the drinking of which they seemed to regard as the height of Western decadence and sophistication. I assumed there wasn’t much Bailey’s to be had when they got back home. Also in this bar was a piano player (the Russians seem to like live music at all possible times) called Peter who liked to chat about rock music when he’d finished his stint of popular classics. I was relieved to discover that he was quite happy drinking beer. It was Peter I chatted to until quite late that night as the boat headed on into the darkness, now revealing only the occasional pinpoint of light here and there through the windows of the bar. Although it was sad to be leaving St Petersburg so soon, especially with Galina’s enthusiasm for it, it was time to look forward to what the rivers and lakes had in store for us. Little, as yet, did I know.