Religious art

We've seen a fair among of religious art on our travels so far. It's quite striking how it's very difficult to remember a single painting with someone smiling or expressing joy some other way. We've seen some great stuff, including a couple of brilliant Rembrandts in St Petersburg. However, they do seem to concentrate on the solemn and striking rather than joy. I wonder whether it's churches which emphasise the solemnity more than the joy influencing painters/suggesting what's appropriate or whether painters decide that this is the style of painting they wish to adopt (may be that style makes for the best paintings?).

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The double overnighter

We're now on board the train to Irkutsk for our mammoth double overnight trip. Given the length of the trip, we took no chances and made sure we had a little cabin to ourselves in second class.

We've made it through all 7 episodes of the Long Way Round (thanks to Victoria for giving it to us and dad for getting it into a format we could view on the tab). A very entertaining watch - particularly because a lot of it focuses on the time they spent in Russia and Kazakhstan. We did chuckle at the end where Ewan McGregor says he hopes the message of their journey is to show people that anything is possible. Although motorcycling from London to New York is a hugely impressive feat, it's pretty clear that it was made possible to a certain extent because they got given loads of free kit and had two support vehicles which (whilst not travelling with them) were never too far away. It has inspired Eve though to see if we can find a four wheel drive camper van for future journeys. Anyway, fear not, we've got one or two other programmes to keep us entertained for the upcoming journeys.

The scenery has been lovely today - rolling hills and pretty colourful flowers - as well as the increasingly familiar sight of Siberian wooden cabins.

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Tobolsk

From Tyumen, it was a 3rd class overnight train to Tobolsk. Given that the evening before hadn't delivered the finest carriage in the Russian train fleet, we wondered what awaited us. We needn't have been concerned - it was great. A lovely modern train - softer seats and pleasantly air conditioned.

Tobolsk itself is a pleasant town and Hotel Sputnik provided a good sized room with the world's biggest bath in the en suite. It's unclear whether it's just the Lonely Plant which calls the town the Oxford of Siberia - but two nice university buildings does not an Oxford make. It's finest asset is the lovely old wooden houses and the jazz club was great too. Sadly, we just missed out on seeing the local football team because our train to Irkutsk beckoned.

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Addenda

Forgot to mention that the lady in the only shop on Svet Island used an abacus to total up our purchases. On it's own, this may seem quaint, but perhaps not totally incongruous. However, the abacus use should be seen in the light of the fact that when we asked to buy a bottle water she opened the bottle fridge with a remote control.

Also forgot to talk about our top museum trip in Tobolsk. The guide book spoke about the eerie former holding prison for Tsarist exiles. We dutifully followed the signs and ended up in a cloakroom and were told we were in the museum. Having deposited our bags, we proceeded up the stairs to the museum proper. It turned out that it was indeed a museum, but it had nothing to do with a prison. It apparently had something to do with a (fairly poorly stocked) town library - given that it was all in Russian, that was our best guess. Numerous people came up to us and gave us (what we can only assume were) interesting facts about what we were looking at, but sadly it was all lost on us - we left as soon as felt polite!

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Tyumen

A slightly lower grade third class cabin took us to Tyumen for the night and back on to the main Trans-Siberian route. A slightly odd hotel awaited us. On arrival, a lady was called down to meet us. James Bond-style she descended via a glass lift and brought her crib sheet with her which started with: Hello, nice to meet you. However, she skipped that bit and jumped straight to: "passport".

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Tobolsk

Tobolsk is a lovely little town - it used to be Siberia's capital, but gradually lost its importance when it was bypassed by the main Trans-Siberian route. The Kremlin there is in great nick and the old town down the hill is charmingly dilapidated with stacks of lovely wooden houses. It gave you an insight into how the peasants would once have looked up to the lord of the manor types in their fancy place up on the hill.

The town isn't really set up for visitors though - we saw one hotel (the one we were staying in) and one cafe (where we ate very well twice) in our two days there. We were greeted with broad smiles on our second visit to the cafe - I assumed that we'd created such a good impression first time. The waitress came over and asked for our dictionary and disappeared for 5 mins. She returned with a slip of paper saying we'd been under-charged the day before by 250 rubles (we had thought it a little cheap). No wonder she was delighted to see us - there's every chance it could have come out of her wages.

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Leaving Yekaterinburg

We were pleasantly surprised to board a very modern train that evening to Tobolsk - easily the nicest sleeper I've ever been on. We had been losing faith in the low train number theory espoused by The Lonely Planet, but it really worked this time. We got a second class cabin to ourselves and slept very soundly. The bed was soft and all we could hear and feel was the gentle rocking of the train.

The Lonely Planet with its usual flourish promised a "fine and picturesque market" on the platform when we arrived in Tobolsk. It looked like a row of shops to me.

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Yekaterinburg

After the island trip, we jumped on the night train to Yekaterinburg - Boris Yeltsin's old stomping ground before he was promoted to Moscow. More importantly for a lot of Russians, it's where the last czar and his family were murdered (apparently the excuse was that someone was planning to break them out of their house arrest and killing them would very effectively prevent this). They've built a church on the spot of the murder and the czar and his family are venerated by the orthodox church - not, it seems, because he was a particularly good chap - he seems to be regarded as responsible for millions of deaths by various means. All adding to the impression that there is a considerable blurring between church and state.

We ate Japanese that evening at a microbrewery drinking wheat beer - there's as cultural mix for you. The Russians do seem to love their Japanese food. There are Japanese restaurants everywhere.

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Sviyazhsk

After a pleasant day wandering around Kazan, we head off the next day on a two hour boat trip down the Volga to Sviyazhsk island. It used to be bigger than it was, but it became smaller when they needed a reservoir for a new power station. Anyway, it's a lovely spot with a couple of very old monasteries. The slight downside was that it was a bit of building site. There's been loads of work going on in a lot of places we've been, but this was a new level! Not only are the buildings being spruced up, the streets are all being relaid - with mod cons like street lights. It had a lot of character, but in five years I think it'll look even better.

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Kazan

After lovely quiet catch up sleep, we went for an explore around Kazan. Of all the cities we've so far in Russia, it seems to be the one most touched by modernity - various new buildings around. However, it also has a world heritage-listed Kremlin, which contains not only an orthodox cathedral, but also an enormous mosque - which gives you an indication that we are making our way further east. We're almost in line with Tehran and tonight's train journey will take us over the Europe-Asia "border". The ethnic mix is also starting to change a little.

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Maxim Gorki

Nizhny Novgorod's most famous son is the playwright, Maxim Gorki. We popped into his house today. Not exactly welcoming: the door was unlocked (but not open) when we arrived, but on a chain. Once we'd been granted access, there were at least four people working there, but it wasn't clear what they all did. One lady's job seemed to be to follow us around and turn the lights on and off. Another sold us the tickets (once she'd opened up the ticket office) - although, given that we were the only visitors, you'd struggle to call it a full-time job. Interesting museum though.

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A new twist on Al Capone

My mate in Moscow was telling me what happens if you refuse to play along with the corrupt and experience some modicum of success. The economic crime unit mysteriously finds some financial irregularities and you're packed off to prison. Struck me that this was a bit like Al Capone - with a twist. They couldn't get him for his most heinous crimes, but they managed to get him for massive tax evasion. These guys in Russia are honest types who've committed no crimes, but go down for tax evasion anyway.

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Nizhny Novgorod

After Vladimir, it was a short-ish hop on the train to Nizhny Novgorod (about two hours). After being slightly perturbed that the tram was taking a completely different route to the one marked in the Lonely Plant, we actually found the hotel without any great difficulty.

Nizhny (as locals apparently call it) has a lovely setting on the Volga river - before the Trans-Siberian, the major way of getting goods and people around this enormous country. It has a lovely Kremlin, which has a concert hall which is great on the outside and Soviet inside. Unable to pass up the opportunity to see the Nizhny Novgorod philharmonic orchestra at home, Eve spent a while trying to buy tickets for the evening's performance. Turns out that our money was being refused because they were in a season of free concerts - it just took us about 10 mins of passing the dictionary back and forwards to work this out!

After the concert we headed for the CCCP bar which was ironically dripping in Society memorabilia - Stalin busts, propaganda posters and the like. Life was so good back then, everyone had to be reminded just how good it was.

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Suzdal

Suzdal is about an hour by bus from Vladimir. Despite the lady in the hotel suggesting a taxi for a tenner, we decided to head down to the bus station to jump on the local bus. Matters were complicated a little because the 11am bus was cancelled, so a fair few people had to squeeze on the slightly dilapidated bus leaving at 11.30am. Luckily we'd waited by the gate, so were near the front of the queue - managed to grab a seat, which was no mean feat as the 25 seater must have pulled away with 50 people on board. We noticed on the way that this is the place where buses are recycled. A number of buses had adverts for local shops in Germany or the name of Dutch bus operating companies. The bus we were on was probably more suited to scrapping than recycling.

Suzdal itself is a town of a few thousand people and a profusion of churches and monasteries by a lovely river. The guide book with its usual flourish spoke of the town experiencing a tourism boom. I can only assume this is relative given that we must have seen about 100 tourists (including the seemingly ever present Chinese tour group) in total during our 6 hours there.

We had lunch in the Archbishop's dining hall with its fine collection of samovars (hot water dispensers). Most of the afternoon was spent at the monastery at the top of the town which appears to have doubled as a POW camp during WWII. We were treated to two renditions of discordant bell ringing. Some chap goes up the bell tower on the hour and manually operates the bells - one man band style with arms and legs flailing around.

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Vladimir

We left Moscow and headed east a little: to Vladimir only three hours away. The train had a number less than 100 (the lower the better for Russian trains) and we were on our own in a second class compartment. We even got a packed lunch with a little carton of apple juice.

Vladimir was a little drab at first sight - the fact that it was drizzling probably didn't help, but it could also do with a lick paint in places. We hopped on Trolly Bus 5 and headed up the hill to our hotel. Nice little place on the main road - opposite a pizza joint where we had dinner (seemed to be a but if a local date spot, although oddly no-one spoke to each other and just watched Russian gangster rap on mtv). It felt much more like real Russian life than St Petersburg or Moscow. It has a couple of nice-looking churches and a couple of Communist statues, but not much more. It's main attraction is that it is the nearest town on the train route to Suzdal - more to come on that.

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Graves

When we were in Jerusalem, we saw the thousands of tombs on the Mount of Olives well placed for the Messiah to walk by. In the Nikolaikirche in Berlin we saw tombs near relics which was supposed to smooth the passage into the afterlife. Communism too appears to have its favoured burial place: the Western Wall of the Kremlin was their spot. Lenin's Mausoleum is there (so dark inside I almost missed the stairs and came a cropper) and others have their graves just behind - including the mass murderer, Stalin. Odd to think that supposedly scientific humanist systems appear to have their own shrines and "holy" sites.

The fact that the Communist revolution adopted other traditions is clear from the fact that Stalin lived in the Kremlin where the Czars of old resided.

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Moscow

We warmed to Moscow. It may not have the Baroque uniformity of St Petersburg (which was basically all built at the same time about 300 years ago), but it has a fine spread of other buildings - not as blighted by communism as we had feared (the city centre at least). The buildings come in all different shapes, sizes and eras reflecting Moscow's long history.

The metro in both cities reflects a "chariot of the people" idea. Huge stations very deep underground (which could also double as bomb shelters if required) with lashings of marble and wide grand platforms. It's also ready cheap (in stark contrast to everything else in both cities) - about 50p a journey.

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Saw some Hari Krishnas in Moscow today - exactly the same song

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Moscow

After a mad dash to get the keys back to the apartment rental company, we jumped on the ultra modern train to Moscow. Four and a half or so hours later we arrived - distinctive dominating (and slightly scary) Moscovite towers with spikey peaks.

We went to a Georgian restaurant for dinner - Georgian food is to Russians what curry is to Brits. Nice meal in the world's most expensive city. I think we got an insight into its underbelly as we ate. Two very nice cars turned up in quick succession outside the restaurant - Bentley and a Rolls I think. Both were followed by a 4x4 with blacked out windows. As each nice car stopped, four guys in dark suits jumped out of the 4x4 and surrounded the nice car and opened the doors. One jumped in the driver seat and drove the nice car away, two followed the wealthy couple into the restaurant and one stood outside the restaurant. I can only assume they're really popular - what other explanation can there be?

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Marinsky

We went to see the Marriage of Figaro at The Marinsky Theatre on Friday night. An opulent setting which is completely in keeping with the city as a whole. The opera itself was in Italian with Russian surtitles - not that I think that made much difference. In my experience, you need the synopsis to hand to follow the story whatever language it is presented in. The unexpected thing was that the seats were all individual chairs - not rows of cinema-like seats - makes getting up and down the rows a bit of a challenge.

All good fun and we made it to a roof top restaurant for a midnight meal as our time in St Petersburg drew to an end.

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Before I forget

Some random things

- although there are some cars with taxi signs on the roof, every car is a potential taxi here - just stick your hand out and see who fancies stopping. No-one uses the meter anyway!

- anyone can sunbathe by lying on the ground, but if you want to sunbathe properly standing up is the way to go here. At the Peter and Paul Fortress yesterday (more church and state separation issues), there were loads of people standing dramatically to maximise their exposure to the sun. They only get 75 days of sun here, so they have to make the most of it I guess (we've had four sunny days in a row).

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Photos

The Russians put the Chinese to shame when it comes to posing for photos. The Chinese make an effort, whereas the Russians go the whole hog. Almost every woman seems to be taking part in a photo shoot and thus adopts suitably alluring poses - quarter turn back to the camera and the like. Blokes, on the other hand, seem to go for more sultry looks - strong and silent types.

St Petersburg

A grander city you couldn't hope to see - fine buildings as far as the eye can see. From our wanderings and boat trips, we've only spotted about four buildings in the whole of the inner city which look out of place - presumably post WWII additions (from the train the suburbs looked jammed full of more typical communist residential architecture). The scale really is breathtaking.

It appears that the separation between church and state may not have been such a big deal in days gone by up here. Churches seem to commemorate czars as much as any religious figures and some of the architecture comes over as more imperial than spiritual. This may have something to do with how Russia decided to adopt the Orthodox branch of Christianity. I'm told the czar sent out a band of men to check out the world's religions and recommend one for Russia. The Orthodox form was adopted because of the beauty of the buildings and tangible presence of God. However, it seems to have become very much a state religion.

St Petersburg

St Petersburg is currently the city that never appears to get dark. It's as light at 11 pm as it is at 5pm - thankfully Eve brought along some face masks from a long haul flight last year - Leanne is having to make do with wrapping her face in a towel! It is a little a bit wierd that it's so light, but handy because you never have to walk home in the dark. I wonder if crime falls dramatically during the White Nights?

Belarus

Although we only spent a day trundling through on a train, the story we were told about Belarus seems to ring true: a proper Soviet throwback spot. Minsk looked to have a couple of modern buildings, but that seemed to be pretty much it for the whole country. We had a couple of hours' stopover in a town called Orsha. And the train did literally just stop - not at a platform, but just near the station so we had to clamber down a makeshift ladder and over some railway lines to habe a wander.

To say there was very little there would be overstating the point (although the train station was a fine piece of imposing architecture), but Eve did do very well to buy us two bottles of water with her visa card. Odd that the train should stop there given that it only had about 7 stops in total - including Berlin and St Petersburg, but there you are.

We stayed up for a little bit hoping to reach the Russian border so we wouldn't be woken for it - we needn't have bothered: Russia and Belarus get on so well that once you're in Belarus there are no visa controls until you leave Russia. Good job we went to sleep when we did.

Gauges

After the air conditioning got going, we settled in for a very pleasant evening gliding through the Eastern German and Polish countryside. Although we shared no tongue in common with the conductor (save for some helpful vocab which Eve remembered from school days), he was really helpful and friendly.

The one thing out of his control was the timing of border crossings. We trundled out of Poland at about 2am (I thought it was the Belarussian border, so brandished my visa to some confused looking border guards). That visa however did come in handy when we encountered the Belarus border about 10 mins later. It has to be up there on the expensive visa scale. 50 quid for a two day transit visa. All went swimmingly (the customs guys gave up when they found out we don't really speak any Russian). Major works on the train followed. The old Soviet states have a slightly wider gauge on their train lines, so our train had to be duly adapted. That all sorted, it was time to head into Belarus

The off

After four great days in Berlin (including a lovely birthday), it was time for Eve's parents to return home and us to start our trip up to Russia. The train to the airport and the one to Saint Petersburg left from adjacent platforms so we could see Stephen and Kathryn onto their train and then jump on ours (delayed by about 25 mins, but we were pretty confident they'd be able to make up the time over the following 36 hours).

Getting the right carriage was fairly important given that only one of them was actually going to St Petersburg - the others were on their way to Moscow and Kiev I think. It wasn't exactly the height of modernity, but we had a bunk each in our little (Eve calls it cute) first class compartment - as well as a little chair and a sink. The chair cunningly hid a cool box under the seat.

Berlin

Great to be back in Berlin - the pace of change seems to have slowed down enough that the place seems as familiar as it ever did. The main changes seem to be that the old East German meeting hall has gone (and all its asbestos with it) and the Reichstag is much more difficult to get into. The former has apparently been removed in the name of rebuilding an old palace (Potsdam has taken this idea to the max). The latter is the victim of heightened security - never quite sure how significant the threat is.

Liege

Passed through Liege train station on the way to Berlin - could be the best station I've seen. Hugely impressive, but I'm not sure why something so grand and modern was warranted

Forgot to mention that not long after arriving in Paris we found ourselves at Notre Dame with the sound of an accordion in the background and the sight of a loved up couple in their 50s inappropriately fondling each other on the banks of the Seine - ah, Paris

Roland Garros

The flanerie complete (although can it ever be truly complete?), we headed off to Roland Garros on Tuesday. Murray fought through the pain to win the fifth set - although he seems to have that permanent teenage look of the whole world being against him. I hope he enjoys the fact now and again that he is ranked the 4th best player in the world.

Paris

In Paris we revived the ancient art of flanerie. In the 1800s, some young and wealthy types clearly had too much time on their hands and came up with flanerie - largely wandering with no purpose but the joy of aimless meandering. The strict rules included having no destination and no end time. You wandered in whatever direction took your fancy until you decided not to any more.

I thought we were following these principles very closely until I realised Eve had subverted the process to lead us to her favourite ice cream shop.

Onwards

After three days of packing up our lives in London, it was off to our first stop (Brussels) for Mark and Wiebke's wedding. I was on ushering duty (executed with aplomb in case you're wondering).

Brussels has often struck me as a decent place to live - huge apartments for decent rent and a gravy train so long that there's space for all. It also appears to be the place for drink driving. Someone told us about when he was pulled over for a random check. He was asked whether he'd had anything to drink that night. He replied that he'd had three beers. The police invited him to take a 30 minute break before blowing into the breathalyzer if he needed it.

My general impression of Brussels is that it is decent if not world beating (as the guide book puts it: not a city you immediately fall in love with). A helpful indication was provided by the paper someone was reading on our trip from Brussels to Paris. It had a special section on the previous day's 20km run - not a marathon, a 20km run - just less than half a marathon. Brussels - probably just about less than half a world city - but I guess you may not be looking for a world city.

Shabbat

Compete abstinence from work for 24 hours can be tricky when work is broadly defined (although that will depend on your rabbi). This has led to a few work arounds. Take the Shabbat elevator - pressing the button would be work, so the solution is a lift which stops automatically on every other floor - annoying I imagine if you live high up. The Shabbat mobile phone is also on the market - I'm told that there is a chance (very small though it may be) that your call may not connect (there is some setting which means one time in a thousand or something the call won't connect). If it may or may not connect, apparently that puts it more in the leisure than work bracket.

When quizzed a recent covert said that God may have given the 600 or mishvot, but he gave no guidance on compliance, so it can be about the letter rather than spirit of the thing.

We were told about a newly arrived diplomat who made the mistake of driving through an ultra orthodox Jewish area of Jerusalem on Shabbat. The story ends with her car literally being stoned and a rescue car having to be sent by the Embassy.

Conundrum solved

Found out why there were loads of Thai people in Neot Hakikar. Apparently, after the intifada started, the Arab workers were told to seek alternative employment elsewhere and needed to be replaced. Their replacements needed to be used to working in the fields in pretty extreme heat - the Thais fitted the description.

Even today there is difficulty for other South East Asians getting into Israel, because there's an agreement with the Thai Government.

Ah ha

We spent a couple of lovely days with friends in Tel Aviv - relaxing and hugely informative! Three years as a diplomat has apparently taught him a thing or two about the country and the political situation. I was interested to hear how the settlements may end up backfiring. Time was apparently when they were set up so they could be given back in land swaps (although some also no doubt thought that it was important to populate all the land). Now there's little hope of dismantling some settlements which are too established, so they may end up giving up bits of the land inside the '47 borders in order to keep the settlements.

I also learned that the plan would be to create a Palestinian State with the West Bank and Gaza. The slight problem being that they aren't next to each other. I'm told the solution could be to connect them with an enclosed road - novel.

Not so anonymous generosity

It feels that almost all public spaces in the bits we saw of Israel owe their current state to a named benefactor - who in turn takes the opportunity to dedicate it to (usually) a relative. It appears that loads of people want to leave their mark. We read about one audacious bid to have a national museum of some repute take the name of a donor in return for USD20m (the equivalent of The National Gallery in association with Richard Norridge) - initially accepted, but it seems that certain things are untouchable - after an outcry the name and money returned.

Kibbutzim

I had this image in my head that a Kibbutz was some kind of modern day communist ideal and I think it probably was at some stage. However, times change. The ones we saw had diversified a little - primarily into 5 star tourist resorts.

I was told that the ideal is also struggling a little due to a lack of younger people keeping the idea going. A lot of the originals are moving into retirement and the model only works if there are enough young people to keep the kibbutz going and pay for the retirees. One kibbutz with a number of pensioners fairly recently went bust - the government stepped in.

Very remiss

I've gone a bit quiet over the last couple of weeks - there's much to update you on! I think I left matters at our pilgrim hostel in The Galilee. It's a lovely area. So tranquil in fact that the Bible stories about storms on the Sea of Galilee seemed a little far fetched - until a storm suddenly blew up one night and you could see that it would be rather unpleasant to be out on the water. Our white car also got caked in mud as dirt blew in.

We visited the classic sites where significant things are said to have happened (apart from Capernaum, which is an impressive ruin, there is the usual guesswork going on). Either way, Jesus was pretty active in the region and you can see how the references to him walking from one place to another (and taking time out in the fields) all fit together.

We also popped into Tsfat (well, that's one transliteration, but there are plenty of others - Hebrew there's no standard way of writing Hebrew names in English), it's the home of Kaballah, which I'm told Madonna is very fond of. You can only imagine how much the Lonely Planet loves the home of Jewish mysticism - positively salivating. It's actually a nice town up in the hills, which has memories of the time which led to the creation of the State of Israel. There's a staircase which the British built to keep the Jews and Arabs apart. We didn't see all that many Arabs during our visit there.

Eve's culinary highlight came on the way home from Tsfat - a goats cheese farm down a dirt track which served platters containing ten homemade goats cheeses and other goodies.