Monday and Tuesday
again were filled with sightseeing, Monday it was The Yusukov Palace and the
Alexander Nevsky Monastery and Cemetery and Tuesday the Menshikov Palace and
another visit to the Hermitage. I also had another delightful lunch invitation
by Alexandr's deputy Vyacheslav V. Chaynikov.
The palaces are
impressive and appear to have been built in permanent competition among the
nobles to outdo each other and, where possible, even the Tsar. And it has to be
always taken under consideration that many artifacts were removed by the communists, mostly to be included in the Hermitage
Collections. The unbelievable wealth of the Hermitage is the result of this
behavior. I'll never forget the yearning eyes of the curator of the Stroganov
Palace when he talked about which picture was supposed to be hanging where,
when these pictures now can (or cannot) be seen in the Hermitage.
I guess this
is one reason why the Hermitage soon will be extended by another building next
to the present one. Somebody figured that one would need about 80 years of
regular visits to see all the paintings and objects on display. I guess soon
you'll need another 20 years... I shall put some of the myriad of pictures in
(in due course and with delay as usual and may ask for your forgiveness). Just
so you get an idea: in my St. P. file are close to 1000 pictures...
So Tuesday night I
loaded my Yamaha and the bike and Wednesday morning serviced my bathroom and
filled the water tank, checked that everything was safely stowed (pretty much
like on a yacht) and set off direction Moscow. That's about 700 km. On the way
were a few 'must sees'. The first was Pavlovsk (the name comes from the son of Catherine
the Great's son for whom she had the place built) where due to a certain time
pressure I only visited the park, which was impressive enough. I also found it
a bit of a bad joke that they charged almost 20 Eur, 5 of which were for the permit
to take pictures (Russians would pay exactly half). My Russian in this case
didn't work as I must have looked very 'foreign tourist'.
A few kms from
there, however, is the real crowd puller: Tsarskoe Selo (renamed Pushkin by the
communists) and Cathy's Palace. Definitely a must to see and all the other
palaces and gardens are small holds in comparison. Her palace must be bigger
than Schönbrunn and the garden is beautiful and full of follies like another
little 'Hermitage', a theatre, a Turkish Bath that looks like a mosque and
several other edifices plus a lake about 1.5 km long and about 500m wide. The
lines were too long for me to see the inside (it was, by the way, cheaper than
Pavlovsk) but I also felt an emerging 'palace fatigue'... But I'd like to sum
it up as follows: it now is totally understandable for me why the Russians had
a revolution and why it got so radical. The leading families simply didn't know
when enough was enough and the peasants went hungry... somehow history seems to
repeat itself when I look down the streets of Moscow and compare them which
what I saw on my drive to the capital.
But first I had to
look at Alexander's Palace (from the outside) and its gardens. It was built for
Alexander I
but mostly was used by the unfortunate Nicolas II who (to his
credit) preferred a little simpler lifestyle. Nevertheless it was impressive
enough and also the garden was a little more modest and to my taste, if you
know what I mean...
But it was late in
the afternoon and I wanted to get to Veliky Novgorod, one of Russia's oldest
cities dating back to the 9th century. What I found most interesting was that
it was part of the Hanse, a group of trading posts founded by Germans. I
arrived early evening and first looked for a place to stay. I quickly found it
next to a hotel within walking distance to the center and when asking I readily
got the permission and my offering of a contribution was friendly rejected.
Well, they were no museum...
I immediately went
off to inspect the town which was in wonderful evening light. The Kremlin and
its churches are nicely restored although I was too late to see them open. The
other side of the river has more old churches but the buildings mostly are in a
sorry condition and much work will be required. The area on the Kremlin side,
however, looks much better.
I also discovered a
monument to Rachmaninoff (unveiled only in 2009) who was born nearby into an
aristocratic family and had to flee the country in 1917, eventually settling in
the USA and dying there in 1943.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Rachmaninoff
The next morning I
wanted to be out early which was hindered by the blockage of the one of the
most important bridges resulting in a total traffic collapse which, as I later
found out was caused by two totally 'mentally challenged' policemen who stood
at a roundabout 'directing' traffic in a way that the roundabout almost
constantly was blocked and there was practically no way for cars wanting to
make space to escape. It cost me almost an hour to get out of this small town.
I was quite
surprised to find out that basically the main road connection between Moscow
and St. P. is mostly one lane in each direction plus a middle lane which
alternates as overtaking lane for each direction. Sometimes it even had only
one line in each direction. The landscape does not change very much and is
mostly forest with a few lakes thrown in. There are efforts to improve this and
the surface is mostly ok. At many stretches they were busy renewing the
surface. Traffic was so heavy that had to go through several jams and finally
abandoned my plan to stop in Tver and Klin (a town about 75km NW of Moscow)
where Tchaikovsky spent many summers and where there is now a museum. The last
75kms took me over 2 hours and finally about 8 pm I found my camping ground in
Sokolniki Park which is very nicely located among trees and close to town.
While it has all the amenities the management is not too good as the reception
is only present from time to time.
One thing, however,
became clear to me: in addition to the (super)rich-poor gap that appears to be big
in the cities it is blatantly worse once you get out of them. In Belarus the 'off
the beaten track' villages looked by far better than what I saw on the main
road. There the efforts of the disliked (by much of the rest of the world) Mr.
Lukaschenko seem to pay off. He came from the country and seems to have
recognized this problem and tries to stop the influx into the cities by
improving the infrastructure of the peasants.
Moscow is a
megapolis with boulevards to match. Driving is a challenge with speed limits
ignored by practically everybody and that, I guess, unnoticed as more than 50%
of the drivers seem to be busy on the phone without hands-free equipment. I
wouldn't mind so much, as my friends might think, provided I could keep up with
the 'Jones' or more appropriately with the 'Kusnetzovs' which I really can't
with my 125ccs getting me up to 90km/h and sometimes even 100 km/h. Today I
once got overtaken when I was doing close to 100 by a Mercedes going at least
160 km/h. While the police is also driving BMW 528i and E-Class 350 4-matic it
doesn't seem to care much... Well, so far I made it without accident but I have
to be extremely concentrated and careful.
I shall not bore you
with my attempt to get a new battery for my electric drill (this trip seems to
be full of weak batteries). Let me leave it at that: I drove over 250 km back
and forth through Moscow during the last 2 days with sales people saying on the phone they have it and
when I get there saying, sorry, wrong information and the local OBI which after
a long search I found sells exactly my drill, but not the rechargeable
batteries. So tomorrow I'll have to check a last address...
A more pleasant
event was a short meeting with Dr. Stepic, Martin Grüll, Peter Lennkh a Johann
Strobl and Genna Yerokhin after the SB Meeting when Sergei Monin presented me
with an official letter of recommendation for all the Raiffeisen Branches on my
way. With Genna I had a pleasant lunch yesterday. Which leads me to a comment about
'our' presence in Moscow. 'We' are literally everywhere, or at least the gable cross.
On my trips over the past 2 days I must have passed at least 2 dozen branches.
I couldn't stop to take pictures as I mostly was on 'no standing or stopping'
territory but I constantly saw advertising on lamp posts. I don't think there
were 5 minutes where I didn't see 'our' logo somewhere.
With this I close
for today and wish everybody an as pleasant a week as mine are...
