GoneToSee

My train left Irkutsk at 8:57am and arrived in Ulan Ude at 4:22pm.  Those are times on the schedule and that was the time they left and arrived.  Russian trains are punctual.  If it appears we’re going to be a few minutes early, the train will stop outside of town for as long as it takes to get on schedule and arrive at the appointed time.  If we’re going to be a few minutes late, I assume they speed up.

Our trip took us around the southern tip of Lake Baikal.  We literally ran right beside the lake.

Most of the color change is over.  There are still some trees with fall colors but all the birch trees have shed their leaves.  There are a couple of towns right at the southern tip of Lake Baikal and people are out on the lake fishing.

I’ve tried several times to get a photo of our train as we were making a turn but there isn’t anywhere available on the train without shooting through a window.  A window that is not able to be opened and is usually not clean.  Here are two images.  One is of our train and the other of a freight train that will cross paths with us shortly on a neighboring track.

My first full day in Ulan Ude I wanted to visit the Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the Ivolginsky Datsan, the center of Russian Buddhism, about 20 miles outside the city.

Before the Revolution, there were hundreds of these monasteries in the area.  Almost all were closed and the monks sent to the Gulags in the 1930’s.  In 1945, Stalin gave permission for this datsan to be constructed here as a mark of gratitude for Buryatiaya’s help during WWII.  The Buryats are native to eastern Russian and are largely Buddhists.

My translator, Anna, presented me with a prayer shawl

and took me on a 45 minutes guided tour of the monastery.  You can photograph anything outside the temples but, as normal, nothing on the inside.

I was instructed that you walk clockwise around the temples and when you go in them you never turn your back on the deities…you back out of the temples.

There are prayer wheels everywhere.

All different sizes and designs.  They are said to contain many prayers for your good health and happiness and all of your family and the people you know.  You are to turn them clockwise as you walk past them.  I would guess I turned fifty prayer wheels as I walked around the datsan.

This monastery is also a university for buddhists.  There are about 100 students here and they are here for eight years.  After completing their studies here, they go to another location for another eight years.  They have dorms here and instructors have small homes.

There are different temples dedicated to different deities, both male and female. And Buddas are in every temple.  I’m sure I’m missing some of the many points that Anna told me but my note taking leaves a lot to be desired.

There are eight major holidays in the life of the monastery and only on those days are some of the temples and gates opened.  This is one of those gates.

It was a very interesting experience.  I learned a lot more than I shared here.

For most of its recent history, Ulan Ude had many military bases in the area and was off limits for foreigners until about 1990. Princess Anne of Great Britain led the first royal tourists in since the Tsar’s execution in 1918.

Another of the sights in Ulan Ude is an enormous head of Lenin on display in the main square.  It is roughing 25 feet high and weighs 42 tons.  Local Buryats think it may have been put there as revenge for their resisting Sovietisation.

Lastly, for today, upon arriving back in town and stopping at the main square, there was a folk festival getting underway.  I stayed around and shot some images of the dancers, singers and people in costume.

This last gentleman is not in costume.  He is a monk from the datsan and was here for the celebration.

I leave at 7am tomorrow morning, Monday, by bus for Mongolia, the home of Chinggis Khan.  Ulaanbaatar, the capital, is said to be the coldest country capital in the world.  I don’t think it will be while I’m there.  I’ll spend a few days in the capital then I’ll fly to western Mongolia to join a small group for a week visiting eagle hunters.

I’m not sure what my Internet service is going to be like especially between the 10th and the 18th.  So if you don’t hear from me don’t start worrying until after the 18th.

Ron

Nikita Bencharov, according to my guidebook and some of the young people who work here, is almost singlehandedly responsible for making Olkhon Island accessible to visitors.  He still lives within the compound but wasn’t here during my visit.

The compound is a series of individual buildings: cabins, a dining room, reception, staff quarters and the bistro.

My cabin and notice the water supply over the sink.  The space here is spartan.  All the workers speak multiple languages…Russian, of course, but also English, French and Chinese.  Most of the staff seem to be from Irkutsk.

They also have gardens and greenhouses to grow their own vegetables.

The compound and all the private homes around it have fencing.  Not so much for the privacy but to keep the cattle out.

I watched one morning as a staffer chased two cows out of the compound.

They also had unique locks for all the cabins.  You weren’t going to walk off with this in your pocket.

Roman, the barista at the coffee shop, spoke great English.  He was also an exceptional photographer.  He also told me that tourists come here both summer and winter.  They come for the hiking in the summer and they ice skate on the lake in the winter.  The lake is as smooth as glass and he showed me a video of him ice skating shot from a car driving beside him.  The entire lake freezes to a depth of about 10 feet and people drive to Olkhon Island across the lake.  They even have lanes marked off, he says.  The lake is about 400 miles long and 30 – 50 miles wide.

It was here in the bistro that I met the only other American I’ve met on this trip.  His name is Tabor and he’s from Canon City,  Colorado.  This is the second summer he’s worked here.

I’m off to my last stop in Russia….Ulan Ude.  We’ll dip south from Irkutsk to go around the southern tip of Lake Baikal and cruise into Ulan Ude.

More to come!

I left Irkutsk last Monday morning.  The shuttle picked me up at my hotel about 8:20 and I expected a ride of a couple of hours.  Well, two hours later…after making multiple stops at other hotels, a street side shuttle stop and a car park, we hit the road for Olkhon Island.  Seven hours later and a short ferry ride, we arrived at my hotel, Nikita’s Homestead.

It’s a neat place and I’ll tell you more about it in a later post but this time I want to tell you about my all day excursion on Tuesday.  The village of Khuzhir, where my hostel/hotel is located, is on the west coast of the island about midway between the north and south ends.  I booked an all day tour to the northern half of the island.  The van arrived on time about 10am and there were seven others from Nikita’s that were also on the trip.  The eight of us, five Chinese, two Thai’s and I filled the van.

Along with our driver/guide/chef we headed out.  We headed north avoiding the interstate and taking the more scenic route.  Actually, there is no other way than the scenic route.  Part of it through deep trenches

and some through grassland.

It was all pretty scenic if not teeth rattling.

It wasn’t like we didn’t have choices when it came to hill climbing.

Most of the time our driver seemed to choose the left choice as if it made a difference. We stopped four times to take photos.  This was our first top and this is a 12-image panorama.  Remember, you can click on an image to see it enlarged.

The sun hitting the cliffs on the mainland was beautiful.

The next stop was a sandy beach with an old pier extending out into the water.

Sorry, neglected to shoot the sand as it was crowded with Chinese tourists.  As an aside, there were a lot of Chinese along the way.  Part of it was because yesterday was a big holiday in China.  The 70th anniversary of the rise of Mao.  There was a big military parade in Beijing and everyone got a week off for the celebration.  Some in my van watched it live on their phones as we traveled north.  I don’t know which came first, Chinese tourists or the selfie stick.  Lots of Chinese tourists taking pictures holding up the Chinese flag.  Sorry, I missed those pictures.

After each stop, there were multiple shuttles with tourists.  It was always a challenge to remember which one you arrived in.  But it was simple actually, it was the gray one!

Further north, another scenic stop and another panorama.

At the very northern end of the island, we stopped for lunch.  While we wandered around taking pictures, our driver/guide/chef  prepared lunch:  fish soup, a cheese sandwich, salad, hot tea and a store bought bag of chocolate cookies.

We were on top of a large hill and it was windy and cold.  The soup and all was very good!  After a few more pictures

we were headed back to the village of Khuzhir.  We took the same scenic road.

More to come including a short tour of the village of Khuzhir.  A village of about 1500 people and home to Nikita’s Homestead.

After arriving in Irkutsk yesterday morning, I headed for a couple of cathedrals near the shores of the Angara River.  The Church of Our Saviors and the Cathedral of the Epiphany.  I captured some images during the afternoon and then I went back last night after dinner to try and get a few more.

Here’s the results.

Part of the Church of the Epiphany.

Same church…different section.

Church of Our Savior.

The interiors of both of these churches are amazing but like so many others, photography is not permitted.  I understand why but it would be nice to share it with everyone.

Lastly, I’d like to tell you about a man I met at breakfast.  He’s a carpenter in a small town in southern Norway. A town of about 5000 people.  About double the size of the town I live in.  He’s been on the road nine weeks so far.  And when I say ‘on the road’, I mean on the road.  He’s driven from Norway to Bangkok, Thailand through Europe, Turkey, Iran, the ‘Stans’…the former Russian countries bordering Russia on the south, Thailand, into Mongolia and now he’s here in Irkutsk.  He’s 39 year old.  Yesterday he took his very small car to a transportation company to have it shipped to Moscow.  He doesn’t want to drive the 5000+ kilometers across Russia.  He’s going to take the train.

He told me he’s felt totally safe everywhere he’s been including driving through Iran.  He says the people have been great.  That’s pretty much been my experience but I haven’t traveled across Iran either.

Maybe it’s a little different because he’s Norwegian and not American but, frankly, I doubt it.  As one reader commented earlier, “people are people.  We all have the same desires to be happy and safe.”

He told me that back home people think he’s crazy.  I can relate to that.  Why is he doing this?  He says he’s trying to broaden his views of the world.  He said, “You and I, we’re ambassadors for our countries.”  I hadn’t thought of it that way.  He has a laundry list of places he’d like to visit next.  He’ll soon to be 40 and I’m a lot older than that.  He’s going to get to a lot more places than I am.  But I keep trying, as long as my kids keep paying for my trips.  If only they knew they were!

I’m  headed for Lake Baikal tomorrow, Monday.  The world’s largest fresh water lake about an hour and a half south and east of here.  This lake is more than a mile deep and it’s said that if all the water on this planet dried up, this lake could supply water to the entire world for 40 years.  It’s larger than all the Great Lakes combined.  Specifically, I’m going to Olkhon Island, a banana shaped island that’s roughly 40 miles by 9 miles.  The island got it’s first electric lines in 2005.

See you in a few days!

I’m an oddity on this trip!  I’m an American.  For me, the Trans Siberia Railway was the experience I wanted.  Along the way I haven’t shot a lot of what I’d call memorable photographs.  I have, however, enjoyed the experience of doing something that very few Americans have done.  I know of one lady who was on my trip to Franz Josef Land in July who did it with others with a tour group from Beijing to Moscow.  She did it about a year ago and was kind enough to share some of her experiences with me.

Alexander III gave his approval for the building of a railway connecting the east with the west in 1881.  Construction began in 1891. By 1898 the connection from where I am now, in Irkutsk, to Moscow was completed.  Over the next several years the railway was extended to the coast and into China.  Today there are no steam engines.  As of 2002 they’ve all be changed over to electric.

Traveling by train is altogether different than hopping on a plane and getting from point A to point B.  You meet people, you experience a different kind of lifestyle and you see the countryside.

Most railway stations are multiple tracks going to different places.  There isn’t one train call the Trans Siberian Express.  It is a system of trains.  Some faster with less stops and some slower with more.  I’ve been on both on this journey.

At each train station there are people coming and going.

Coming…..

and going.  Every carriage had two attendants (provodnistsa, women:  porvodnik, men). One works days and the other one nights.  When boarding they check your passport with information they have on an app on their phones to make sure you’re supposed to be there and confirming your compartment number and berth number.  Their job on board is to deliver bed linen, two sheets and a pillow case and a hand towel.  There are no showers on board.  They sold snacks and soft drinks and there was an urn of hot water where you could make tea or coffee free of charge.  They also cleaned the compartments and looked after the toilets as each end of each carriage.  In second class where I traveled there are two uppers and two lowers

Sometime they’re all occupied, sometimes it’s just you and sometimes it could be a male of a female companion across or above you.  Lowers cost more than uppers.

Outside of your compartment was a walkway.

Most trains had a dining car but everyone I met brought their own food on board.

My roommates on my second train, Albina and Vlad.  She spoke a little English but her daughter spoke more and she served as our translator via phone.  Very nice people!

As I said there was a dining car and when I went to visit it was nearly empty.

The waiters, waiting.

Traveling became a lot easier when I got my Google Translate working from an app when I was offline.  Before that, it only worked when I was on the Internet and that wasn’t when I needed it most. It’s a learning process!

Enough for today.  I’ll show you a little of Irkutsk in my next blog post.

Today is Thursday and I’m killing time in my hotel room before my train departs at midnight.  They’ve been nice enough, for half the daily rate, to let me stay here rather than sit on a hard chair at the train station for hours.  It’s a two-hour trip to Taiga, then two-hour wait and then a 4am train that arrives in Irkutsk at 8:30 Friday morning.  Not much sleep time tonight.

I haven’t seen much of the countryside except from the trains.  Most of my time since arriving in Russia as been in cities.  The smallest being Tobolsk which was only 100,000 people.  Tomsk, where I am now, is about 600,000.

I have shot some images of the changing colors from my window on the train.  Not great shots but something different to look at.  Lots of birch trees along the way.

One of my blog readers, Roger from somewhere on his boat, ask about grocery store shelves.  Were they as empty today as in the 90’s?  The answer, as best I can determine, is “no”.  I’ve been in several small convenience stores and one larger grocery store.  They seem just like at home.  Although I was a little surprised to see watermelon in mid-September.

I noted two things.  These sweet potatoes look like they came directly from the ground.  There was still dirt on them.  Second, yesterday while sitting in a bakery having a pastry, I man came in with a basket of fresh strawberries and sold them to the bakery.  He poured them out onto a tray sitting on a scale and got paid for them.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing hadn’t happened with the sweet potatoes although they may have come from a nearby commercial farmer since they were in a box.  But washing them off wasn’t part of the delivery process or the display process!

I may have mentioned this previously but everyone I’ve encountered from the store clerks to the hotel receptionists and people on the street, in general, have been extremely friendly.  I had one occasion in a train station where a younger guy (compared to me, most of them are younger guys) came back to me and carried my large duffle up a long flight of stairs.  There’s no question, as an American, I’m an oddity to most people.  I don’t think they see many of us, especially outside of Moscow.

One other note.  I forgot to mention it but the city of Yekaterinburg was off limits to foreigners until 1990.  The city had specialized in armament research and production since WWII.   It was also named Sverdlovsk until 1991.

That’s it for today.  We’ll talk later!

I left Tobolsk Monday morning and 24 hours later I’m in Novosibirsk.  We changed time zones twice on this trip.  We’re now 12 hours ahead of the midwest.  I grab a taxi to the bus station and waited about two hours to head to Tomsk, about 4 1/2 hours driving time.  Arrived at 2:30.  Get another taxi to my hotel.  It’s a very small place and the taxi drivers didn’t know where it was.  Luckily I had written the address in my notebook.

The two ladies who work the reception desk have been extremely helpful.  With the help of Google Translate, they’ve answered all my questions and got me headed in the right direction.

Tomsk is a university town of nearly 600,000.  I came here to photograph old wooden homes with a “lace” like wood trim.  There are a couple of streets about a 10 minute walk from my hotel where most of them are located.  Many are buckling and in need of restoration but a number of them still have people living in them.

The past and the future.

In Russia, babies are not delivered by the stork.  They are found in cabbage patches.  So, in front of the children’s hospital is a sculpture of a baby in a head of cabbage.

I’m in Tomsk one more day.  Had time to get some laundry done.  Thursday night at midnight I catch a train on my way to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, world’s largest fresh water lake.

I left Russian Europe on Friday night.  I boarded the train at 11pm in Perm, Russia and sometime between then and 4 am when I got off in Yekaterinburg we crossed into Asia.

My last stop in Europe was Perm.  A city of about 1.2 million.  It is believed that Perm was the town that Boris Pasternak sent his Dr. Zhivago to and was also the inspiration that Chekhov used for the town his Three Sisters were so desperate to leave.

About an hour and a half east is Perm 36 a former gulag that is now a museum.  Officially known as the Memorial Complex of Political Repressions.  It is run by  the international human rights organization, Memorial, founded by dissident Andrei Sakharov.

The picture above shows the five levels of security between the prisoners and the outside world.  The second fence is electrified.  It wasn’t enough to kill a prisoner but it certainly gave them a jolt.

I had arranged a tour with an agency to pick me up at the train station and take me to the prison and return me to the train station.  My guide, Alexander, spoke excellent English.

Alexander explained that the term, gulag, was often misunderstood to mean torture camp where the real definition of gulag was what the Russians referred to all of their prison labor camps.  Gulags began about 1918 under Lenin.  Perm 36 was in existence from 1946 to 1988.  It has been turned into a museum because it is the only one where many of the building are still standing.

In the years from 1946-1952, it was primarily a prison for common criminals. From 1952-1972, it had those prisoners plus a roundup of generals, judges, and public officials.  Beginning in 1972 until it closed, more “dissidents”.  Writers, artists, political activities, nationalists, etc. were sent here.  Most prisoners worked.  Gulags were labor camps and high daily quotas were set.  If you didn’t make your quota, you would be put into isolation for days or weeks and you food rations would be reduced.   As Alexander explained it, prisoners in the early days worked in the logging industry cutting trees and making lumber.

Beginning in the 40’s, when Russia was becoming involved in World War II and the country was switching from an agriculture country to a more industrial one, prisoners built factories, power plants, etc.  These prisons were not like German concentration camps where people were herded into showers and killed.  One source says that 90% of those who died in Perm 36, an others like it, was from exhaustion and malnutrition or if caught trying to escape.  If you didn’t make your impossible quote every day you’d get put into a punishment cell and your daily food ration would be cut.

Prisoners were allowed to write two letters a month to relatives and receive one.  Some were allowed visitors that could stay for several days in some instances, according to Alexander.  There was a library and movies.  I would suspect that after working long, hard days there wasn’t a lot of time left for reading and movies.

From Perm to Yekaterinburg.

Yekaterinburg is famous for at least three things.  It is were Tsar Nicholas II and his family was murdered by Bolshevik soldiers and some Hungarian prisoners in the basement of a rich local industrialist in 1918 after 78 days of cruelty by their guards.  The family, the Romanovs, consisted of Nicholas, his wife, four daughters and a son.  They were brutally killed and their bodies dismembered, burned and the remains dumped into a nearby mine shaft.

In 1976, Russian president Boris Yeltsin ordered the house where they were murdered demolished and the Church of the Blood was built at that location. Pictures aren’t allowed in the main area but are allowed in the basement museum. 

The piece on the right represents the Romanov’s, Nicholas, his wife and five children.  The Romanov’s were canonized in sainthood in 2000.  There are numerous tributes to the royal family in the main worship area and in the museum.

In 1991, their remains were discovered and through DNA testing was determined to be those of the royal family.  Blood samples from the remains were tested in the UK from samples provided by Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband.  The Tsarina Alexandra’s sister was Phillip’s maternal grandmother.

The second famous thing about Yekaterinburg is that this is the site were US pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured after being shot down in his U2 spy plane in 1960.  It was an embarrassment for the US as we first claimed it was a weather flight and that he’d inadvertently flown over Russia.  He survived the crash and confessed what he was doing.  He was later traded for a Russian spy by the US in 1962.

I visited the Russian military museum here because the guide book said there was a display here regarding the U2 incident but, if there was, I didn’t see it.  Otherwise I had a private, English speaking guide, that told me about all of their military history and their “liberation” of Czechoslovakia and other military conquests.  I did find it interesting to see the young inventor/soldier who designed the famous Kalashnikov AK47 and AK74 weapon then and later in life.

Lt. General Mikhail Kalashnikov died outside Moscow in 2013 at age 94.  His rifles are now licensed to be built in 30 countries including the United States.

The third thing that Yekaterinburg is famous for is the birthplace of former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin.

From Yekaterinburg it was an overnight train ride to Tobolsk, a town of about 100,000.  The Kremlin here sits on a large hill in town and contains several cathedrals and a prison of all things.

I’m moving on to Tomsk a university city know for its wooden architecture with “lace” trim on the houses.

More to come….

I boarded my first overnight train from Moscow to Kazan on Tuesday evening.  I got to the train station very early because I needed to check out of my hotel.  The lack of English speakers is a daily challenge.  One I did not fully expect in Moscow.  Someone told me, I don’t know if it’s true, that only 200,000 American tourists visit Russia each year.

With a little help from a gentleman who was putting his wife on the same train, he showed me how to read the lighted timetable posted on the wall and decipher which train was mine and which track it would depart from.

My cabin in carriage #20 and berth #1.  That’s the lower berth on the left.  As you can see on the right, the seat is up and there’s a storage area underneath for your luggage.  There’s one on the right and left.  The seat back folds down to form the sleeping berth.  There are also two upper berths.  Upper berths are cheaper than lower berths. This is a second class cabin with four berths.  First class is double the fare and has two berths.  There’s also a third class and that is a double row of upper and lower berths on both sides of a main aisle with curtains.  There are two cabin attendants on each car.  One brought me my sheets, pillow case and blanket and I got to make up on own berth.

As luck would have it, I had two cabin mates, Artem and his father.  Artem spoke pretty good English and this turned into a blessing.  You can purchase snacks and drinks on board and there’s an urn of hot water always available for tea or coffee.

The ride was pretty good but every time the train stopped during the night, there were a number of jolts and they always woke me.

We arrived in Kazan a city of 1.2 million about 7:40 in the morning.  Artem and his father got a taxi and took me to my hotel.  The Volga.  After checking in, I got a taxi to the Kazan Kremlin.  The taxi cost a $1.  It’s not far but it still took about 10 minutes.

The Kazan Kremlin was built by Ivan the Terrible after he had destroyed the previous one.  Kazan is a mixture of Islam and Orthodox Christianity.  The Kremlin illustrates that.

The Kul Sharif Mosque is the largest Muslim place of worship in Europe.

This is also the seat of government for the Republic of Tatarstan and Kazan is it’s capital.

The term kremlin refers to the wall that surrounds the area.  Again, kremlin means fortress or citadel.  All of the buildings are within the Kremlin.

Here are some other scenes.

Last night, Wednesday, my cabin mate, Artem and his fifteen-year-old son, Nikita, picked me up and gave me a tour of their city.  Nikita has been studying English as a 9th grader and did a very good job with it.  Here’s a daytime picture I took of the Palace of Farmers.

And a nighttime version Artem took me to.

Our first stop though was the Temple of All Religions.  This was started in 1992.

I don’t know what this looks like during the day but at night I thought it was pretty awesome.

We also got some nighttime images of the Kremlin, the promenade on the Kazanka River and the puppet theater downtown.  Kazan has two rivers running to it.  The Kazanka and the more well known, Volga.

We also went by the natatorium and hockey arena that has helped enable Kazan to be known as the sports capital of Russia.  Artem, his son and I also drove through the University where his daughter is just beginning and we walked past the president of Tatarstan residence, as well.  We spent nearly three hours touring Kazan.

Every trip I take I luck into meeting someone who stands out as a new friend.  Artem and his son are two of those so far this trip.  I ask Artem if they get a lot of Americans in Russia and Kazan.  He told me I was the first American tourist he had ever met.  Artem is 44.

I’m off to Perm later this afternoon.  I arrive there at 6:30 in the morning.  I’ll visit one of Russia’s most infamous gulags, Perm 36.

More to come!

On Sunday I returned to the Kremlin.  There were several areas that I had not seen the day before and I wanted to visit them.  As I mentioned previously, entry into the Kremlin is free but to see several areas, you must buy a ticket.  One of those areas was the Diamond Fund.  No photography is permitted here.  The display contains all the jewelry Russia has collected or had made for the past several centuries.  There are chunks of raw gold the size of dinner plates, for example.  The largest cut diamond was 392 carats with hundreds, if not thousands, of uncut stones in the display cases.  Also on display is what is said to be the world’s largest sapphire.  The display also had crowns, necklaces, brooches, etc. worth millions of dollars.  The size of some of the necklaces was amazing.  There were three gold bars and one smaller silver bar, too.  According to the printed guide, about two-thirds of the original display was sold off at Christie’s in London in 1927 to support the Russian economy.  The collection was started by Peter the Great and specified that each successor should contribute some jewels.

I got in a line thinking it was to enter a particular cathedral.  When I ask the two young people in front of me if that was what the line was for, they told me “yes”.  It took about fifteen minutes for the line to make its way to the security gate where we walked through a scanner.  The line wasn’t for the cathedral but for Lenin’s tomb.  Obviously, they didn’t understand my question.

As you walk along the path to the display, there are the graves of prominent Russians like Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Gagarin, Russia’s first man in space.

Once you enter the sepulchral gloom you are not permitted to take pictures.  I was allowed to carry my camera but the guards in the room don’t allow any talking or stopping as you pass the display.  When Lenin died of a stroke at age 53 in 1924, two men were given the task of preserving his body and stopping the decaying process.   It is an amazing sight.  He is displayed in a dark suit and tie.  He looks as if he could have died yesterday.

One of the other areas I had to buy a ticket for is Cathedral Square.  This enclosed area is now a collection of museums.

On Monday I took my first train ride to Sergiev Posade.   A city of about 100,000 located about an hour and half northeast of Moscow.  It is one the holiest pilgrimages to see the Exalted Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius.  There is a white wall around the monastery and inside, tourists aside, they say it’s like stepping back in time to medieval Russia.  The monks have long beards, traditional black robes and klubuki hats.

The monastery was founded in 1340 and had great political influence.  It was closed when the communists came to power.  It was re-opened by Stalin in the 1946 as part of a pact made with the Orthodox Church for support for WWII.  Today it houses an Academy and Seminary with about 800 in attendance.  There are also another 300 monks assigned here.

Believers come to this well to wash and fill their water bottles with what they believe to be holy water.

The train ride was a local with 10 stops.  Vendors come aboard to sell all kinds of things to passengers.  Seating is on hard wooden benches three across.

The trip back to Moscow was a little more comfortable.  I bought an express ticket…no vendors and soft seats.

I’ve been trying to try some Russian food at the cafe in the basement of my hotel.  But I did find one Russian specialty place near the hotel.

Sorry, just couldn’t bring myself to try this one.

I leave Moscow later today for first overnight train ride to Kazan.

More to come…..