Trans-Siberian Railway reflections.
Here I am sitting in the middle of Mongolia fulfilling a childhood dream. The snow is all-encompassing and sparkling under the midday sun which is partially obscured by clouds. Pine trees abound on the steep slopes of the surrounding mountains. The occasional semi-stray dog breaks the white quilt but otherwise there is no sign of the local fauna.
It all started as a child, I’ve always been fascinated by railways and in particular ones that traverse large chunks of the globe including cultures and climates. I really have no idea what it entailed and as the travel agent said this was a learning process for her and me.
What about the trans-Siberian railway? Why is it so alluring? From as long as I remember I have wanted to go on this railway the longest in the world at 9,289 kilometers first built from 1891 to 1916. This was from Moscow to Vladivostok but the route I took branched off at Irkusk the capital of Siberia to end in Beijing China. I have always liked railways and this would constitute another box to be ticked like running a marathon and trekking in Nepal. I cannot explain but perhaps it could be likened to climbing a mountain because it’s there. After retirement my wife said “do it now while you can.” So with a degree of trepidation excitement and curiosity I booked the trip. The price is very reasonable and I did not want to go on a private train but rather meet the natives and find out more about the culture of the countries I visited. I often thought about doing the luxury train but you are stuck with like minded passengers and do not have the opportunity to meet the people of the country quite apart from the price difference which was at least 3 times the cost of my trip. Preparations began several months prior with applications for visas for both Russia and China but for some reason Canadians did not need a visa for Mongolia although EU residents did.
I visited in November thinking the weather would be cool but did not appreciate this was a gross underestimate. I flew from Halifax Nova Scotia to Heathrow London and after realizing the next president of the USA was the shock choice of the American public boarded an Aeroflot liner to Moscow. It all went very smoothly until we got to the inevitable lineup at Russian immigration. Not being a very patient man I found it very frustrating to be delayed and almost voiced my opinion as to the holdup but thankfully kept my mouth shut as being in a foreign country one has to obey their rules. Having waited about half an hour for my passport to be stamped, customs was a dawdle and I was met by a lady holding up a placard with my name on it. Extremely efficiently a car delivered me to the four-star hotel I was booked in. Having a morbid fear of heights I was booked in the top story of the 23 story hotel. I should have said something when I booked the trip. It was one of the busiest hotels in the city and one of the most difficult to get attention. For instance I wanted to email my wife but it took at least four attempts to work out how to do this.
The next morning I spotted my next tour guide in the lobby holding up a placard with my name. She was totally fluent in English. She asked me if I had been to Moscow before which I had 25 years previously. So she modified my tour and the first stop particularly as it had been snowing the night before was the Metro. I recalled these underground railway stations were magnificently built with marble walls and chandeliers. I’m told that Stalin wanted to impress the Russian populace of the culture of communism. I am not sure if that was the message received but certainly the architecture is magnificent. Quite the opposite of most Western subways. The whole service was very efficient with trains arriving almost every few minutes. Moscow is said to have a population of about 17 million but unofficially the figure is 21,000,000 with unregistered incomers. The city forefathers had the vision to expand the boundaries of the city with protected undeveloped areas. Statues of Lenin abound but Stalin seems to be persona non grata. After visiting several stations my tour guide and I came to the surface near the Red Square. On the way we passed several magnificent architectural beauties which I appreciated very much. I spotted a man standing on the roof of four storeys shoveling snow and ice down onto the street. Apparently there are several deaths every year from ice falling on unaware pedestrians. This prophylaxis prevented these unnecessary fatalities. Next door is a cathedral. The original destroyed by the antireligious Stalin but was rebuilt in the early 1990s along with a gate into Red Square. The rebuild sought to re-create the original and the inside has been restored in the original concept to look decades older. On the next block we came across GUM the iconic shopping mall. It is pronounced GOOM. When I was there 25 years ago the shelves were bare and the place appeared depressed. Today, what a change. The place glittered with all the top class stores normally found in Harrods of London and Fifth Avenue New York. The transformation was startling and possibly reflective of the change in society several decades after the collapse of communism. We then walked into the adjacent Red Square where they were sectioning off a large skating rink for the winter. As our result I could not get a sight of Lenin’s tomb or the other VIPs such as Yuri Gagarin’s final resting places in front of the Kremlin walls. However the gates to the Kremlin appeared to be shut and as I had visited inside previously we did not try to enter. I seem to recall the wealth contained within was in consummate contrast to the concept of communism.
The relatively light dusting of snow seemed to be bedlam to the traffic. I was surprised as I would expect a routine to have been worked out decades ago to deal with the inevitable weather. Saint Basil’s cathedral, with its iconic multicoloured domes glittering even under the wintry sun, completes the Square. If Stalin had had his way this would have been destroyed but thankfully he was resisted to allow it to go unscathed . Our next stop was the cemetery where those who had fallen out of favor were buried. The most notable is Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev whose star began to fall after the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba when he tried to set up a threat to the USA with rockets pointing north. The artist who made the headstone was hated by Khrushchev but despite this his son commissioned him to design the grave reflecting his black-and-white personality. BorisYelstin is buried under a large sculpture of the Russian flag as his widow felt many have his actions should not be remembered.
A fine example of Moscow Baroque is the Novodevichy convent otherwise known as the New Maiden’s Monastery. Within the tall red walls built in the manner of Jerusalem lies .the oldest structure, the Solemsky Cathedral built in 1524-1525. The whole area contains many churches. Many ladies from Russian Royal families and Boyar clans were forced to take the veil and lived in the ‘nunnery’. It was closed in 1922 by the Bolsheviks but reopened by Stalin as a sop to the Greek Orthodox Church in 1943 as the Moscow Theological Institute and finally in 1994 the nuns returned. It is a Unesco World Heritage site. Moscow is resplendent with statues mostly depicting either war victories or the success of the workers overcoming the bourgeoisie of the Czarists reign. One such is celebrating the achievements of women but Stalin strongly objected to this and at one stage the artist had to resort to hiding under the skirts of the sculpture to avoid arrest. The model was originally demonstrated in Paris and subsequently was moved permanently to Moscow. We went on to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. On December 25, 1812 the last soldiers of Napoleon’s army left Russia forever. On the same day Emperor Alexander I signed a royal manifesto on the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow to “show our gratitude to divine providence for saving pressure from the destruction and that threatened her.” The war with Napoleon, known in Russia as the patriotic war of 1812, proved to be a sort of God’s warning against fashion for everything French which had obsessed Russian society since the 18th century. It also arose unprecedented patriotism in all strata of the country’s population. After the death of Alexander I his younger brother Nicholas the first continued with the construction. The building was 100 m high and took 44 years to build. The cathedral was exploded on December 5, 1931 at the height of communist rule and the site was turned into an open-air swimming pool. Fortunately the subsequent evaporation of steam seriously damaged paintings in the nearby Pushkin Museum of fine arts so rebuilding of the Cathedral was initiated on January 7, 1995 and on August 19, 2000 it was consecrated. It was immediately turned into the major Christian center of the country. Both the interior and exterior are quite magnificent and well worth a visit. Our next port of call was the international space Museum. This is quite a revelation depicting the Soviet race to master outerspace. On view is a model of the original Sputnik, then several subsequent models including those rockets carrying dogs and eventually humans. The thing that struck me was the size of these first cosmonauts; tiny. It makes sense to keep the whole structure as light and small as possible. There was also a mockup space station and various models and original rocket satellites and meteors. I think the tour guide’s enthusiasm was a reflection of the fact that several of her relatives worked on the space program.
I offered to pay for the Metro and other incidentals but this was refused. Overall I was suitably impressed by Moscow.