The Russian Journals, Part Five, Herding the Sheep

(Don't forget, you can click on the photos to enlarge them to full screen.)

Meet Valeria. She was our tour guide for the 12 days of our river cruise in Russia. Vantage Travel calls her a program manager. I called her our guide. I know I have a better picture of her somewhere, but Picassa is hiding it from me right now.

Oh, wait. I know where there's a good photo of her. Hang on a minute.

Here she is. Our baby-sitter, shepherd, and all-around good gal guide.

However, every town we went to also had a local guide waiting for us. Meet Natasha. She led us around Moscow and filled us full of information.

And, yes, every Russian woman was tall, slender, and beautiful. Every one of them. Or, so it seemed.

Usually Natasha, and the other local guides, led the way, while Valeria followed along behind rustling up the strays, and counting noses once we were all back aboard the coach.

Our tour guides were either very, very confident, very, very brave, or very, very sick of foreign tourists, because on our first day in Moscow they shepherded us to the Moscow Metro where we were expected to survive riding the Metro and visiting three different stations. In addition, we were expected to do this as a group, ending up at the same station from which we had departed.

A ceiling in a Moscow Metro station

To make things even tougher for us and to weigh the odds more in their favor, they demanded that we finish with the same number of people as when we started, and they all had to be wearing Vantage name tags. We were not allowed to just grab anybody off the street and add him to our group. In case someone was missing, that is.

I’m thinking the latter—the very, very sick of foreign tourists—was a viable option, because this was September and they had been doing this every week since May with no time or days off. Our group traveled from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The day we were departing the boat to fly home, another group was boarding the boat to begin their tour from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Wall decoration in subway station

So, seriously, how can they be expected to maintain a smile while answering the same dumb questions day after day, solving problems, listening to complaints, and so on, and not have just a bit of a desire to take the whole bloody herd to the Metro and lose them in the bowels of the Moscow subway system? Really. Then they could take the fast lane up the escalators, cackling with glee, and spend the rest of the day at Starbucks.

Of course then they wouldn’t get tipped and they’d probably lose their jobs, and in this economy, neither is preferable. So, with Natasha in the lead—and lecturing forcefully about staying together and following her instructions—and Valeria bringing up the rear, down into the subway system we went. And I do mean down, because many of these stations are 200 feet underground and did double duty as air raid shelters, bomb shelters, and (it’s rumored) sanctuaries in case of nuclear attack. Turns out the Russians were just as scared as we were.

Now what, you might ask, is the point in riding the Metro. We didn’t use it for transportation—to get from one attraction to another. All we did was travel three stations, get off, look around, get on, go back two stations, get off, look around, get back on another line, go to another station, get off, look around, get back on and return to where we’d started. This was not an exercise in showing us how efficient the Russian Metro is, either. This was something entirely different than what you’d expect.

This was an art tour extravaganza, and none other than Josef Stalin was responsible for it. As with many of the buildings constructed during his rule, the subway stations were extravagant with various colors of native marble, precious materials, beautiful chandeliers, sculptures, mosaics, and paintings. Famous artists were commissioned to provide works for the stations.

The subway was planned during the early part of the Soviet Empire, but actual construction was delayed while the Russians got a couple revolutions and a war (WWI) out of the way.

The first line was opened in 1935. Construction continued through WWII. When Nikita Khruschev came to power, the stations became much more Spartan, as did all construction during his time.

To get down to the subway stations, you have to ride the longest escalators I’ve ever seen. We were told to stand to the right of the steps, because the left is the fast lane. A number of people passed us, jogging up or down on the left during the escalator rides that took two minutes or more, and they run faster than US escalators.

A train comes by every 90 seconds from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. The doors open to disgorge and engorge quickly. Be on your toes and hurry because the doors close automatically. The line has 177 stations over its 189 miles. According to Natasha, you could buy a ticket, and ride the subway all day, getting off at each station to admire the art and architecture. It wouldn't be a bad way to spend a few days.

Eight to nine million people ride this system every day during the week, and if you saw the parking problem in Moscow, you would too.

We visited Smolenskaya, Kievskaya, and (of course) Revolyutsii (Revolution) Square stations.

I think the last one, named after one of Russia’s revolutions, was my favorite. Dark paneling, filled with bronze sculptures depicting every aspect of Russians’ lives, there was one little thing that caught my attention and made it special.

You probably can’t see it in this picture. Here’s another.

Sorry, but those people just wouldn’t hold still. See that hand in the center? Reaching up towards something shiny?

Here’s that something shiny. And take a look at the dude on the left, because there's something shiny on that side, too.

And here’s Kathy, her hand on the bronze muzzle of the dog sculpture. Russians think it’s good luck to rub it. Must have been, because Valeria and Natasha weren’t able to lose us that day.

(For a great site about the Moscow Metro with info and360 degree pictures, go to:

http://www.vrmag.org/issue15/MOSCOW_METRO_STATIONS_-_UNDERGROUND_PALACE_PANORAMAS.html)

Driven to Distraction

Those of you who don't blog probably have no conception of how much time it takes to post one story with photos. First, there's conceiving the story in the first place, then selecting the photos and running them through Picassa, doing my best to make them acceptable, considering what I have to work with. Then, because I have yet to figure out the mysteries of posting directly from Picassa to Blogspot and being able to insert text, I have to export the photos to a file under My Documents or My Pictures.

After that comes the scavenger hunt to discover where Picassa hid that file, and this can be a frustrating search sometimes. Then I open your blog and go to "new post," hit the picture icon and browse, and go on the scavenger hunt again to file the file of photos I want. If I'm really organized, I upload the photos--five at a time--in the opposite direction I want them to appear. In other words, the last one first, because each succeeding photo appears ahead of the previous. This is exceptionally time-consuming on my PC because of my slower-than-evolution DSL service.

There are several ways to move photos around once I have them uploaded, depending on the mood of your computer, your browser, the Internet as a whole, and which way I'm holding your tongue. Full moons complicate things no end.

I tend to be guilty of "post haste," which means I am in a hurry and don't take time to proofread for the tenth or twentieth or hundredth time. That means I have to edit again and again and again, all of which is a time-consuming process. Then I have to insert the text to go along with the photos. That's not too bad, but occasionally (frequently) I have to move the photos just so because once in a while if I get too close to the photo, it disappears. Thank goodness for Ctrl+Z, which works once in a while. Otherwise, it's back to uploading the missing picture.

Then comes the fine-tuning, making sure there is some blank space between text and photos, between paragraphs of text, etc., or seeing that there isn't too much blank space. Plus, the photos and text position differently after I publish the post than when I'm working in the "new post" window. In other words, there's no such thing as "print preview." Again, the moods of the computer, browser, Internet, and Blogspot all come into play.

Most of the time when I hit "publish post," I get a very annoying error notice that says "IT" cannot accept my HTML tag. I haven't a clue what that means, except that I have to click the box that says stop showing HTML errors, translate the script to "compose,", scroll down and hit "publish post" again. Every single time. Then once in a blue moon I don't get those error messages. Beats me.

All of the above means that if I knew what the heck I was doing, it wouldn't take so much time.

And then there are the things that get in my way--the distractions. Like, the only day this week it hasn't rained--Wednesday. I think it was Wednesday. Maybe it was Tuesday. I'm still not sure what time zone my head is in.

I went to the post office. Follow along on the drive back as I near my home:










Gasp. These aspens in autumn take my breath away every time.

New termination dust on the mountain tops.

Blueberry bushes alongside the driveway


Still not a killing frost this year, and these dahlias are frost-sensitive.


More dahlias on the back deck.

Of course, when the sky is clear this time of year, that means one thing is certain during the night:


Frost on my truck's windshield the next morning.

It's just as well I'm not going to show you a photo of the dahlias the next morning. You'd cry.

So, along with spending way too much time on my blog, I am frequently driven to distraction by the scenery around me. Sigh. Back to housework. Just wanted to touch bases with you.

The Russian Journals, Part Four, Humoring the OCD

Now that we have the cast and crew introductions over with, I can tell you two important things I learned on my first morning in Russia.

The first is that it’s Mos-COH with a long “o” as in “Hello.” It is not Mos-COW. There’s also the Russian version, which is spelled Mockba and pronounced Mosk-VAH and rhymes with vodka, appropriately. Actually, there’s some dissent about the “cow” thing, and both pronunciations are acceptable in the US and other English- speaking countries. But, if you go there, try not to call them “cows.”

For the second thing I learned, I need to show you a map first.

(Used by permission of Creative Commons)

See Moscow there in the sorta center? Looks all landlocked, doesn’t it? Actually—and this is what amazed me—Moscow is accessible by five seas. Here’s another map.

(Used by permission of Wikimedia Commons.)

See? Five seas: the White, Black, Caspian, Baltic, and the Azov, which is a little dinky body of water with an average depth of 46 feet, and a maximum depth of 50 feet. It’s down there at the bottom left, just off the Black Sea which doesn’t show on this map. What connects all these things are rivers, canals, reservoirs, lakes, and a system of locks to raise and lower ships along the way.

So with this intricate inland waterway, our cruise began at Moscow and went to St. Petersburg, which is on the Bay of Finland in the Baltic Sea. There are two important rivers involved, the Volga and the Neva. Here’s a map of our journey:

(From front cover of Vantage Travel info packet.)

This was only a part of the vast inland waterway system in western Russia. The River Don plays an important role in the southern part of the waterways.

You remember the song “Volga Boatman?” Come on, you probably sang it sitting around the campfire at summer camp.

"Yo, heave ho,

Yo, heave, ho,

Once more, once again, still once more

Yo heave ho,

Yo, heave ho,

Once more, once again, still once more."

Or, maybe you sang this version:

"Ei, uh-nem, ei uh-nem,

Yeshtcho razik'yeshtco raz."

Recognize that one?

Very, very slowly, almost a funeral dirge. Actually, though it is an authentic bargeman’s shanty, it could very well have been a dirge a long time ago because convicts and poor peasants were paid miniscule sums to tow ships and barges up the Volga River. Often the peasants were barefoot and half starved, and they suffered immensely, many not living past thirty years of age.

Here’s a copy of a painting by Russian Ilya Repin that depicts the Volga burlaks (barge haulers). It’s in the public domain now, so I can show it to you.

I thought about that later on, while we motored along serene rivers and canals. How easy it was for us; how back-breaking it was for them.

Our portion of the trip was about 870 miles, with upsy or downsy in 18 different locks along the way, including a series of six locks in a 15 mile stretch that dropped us a total of 263 feet. Unless my online meters-to-feet conversion table was lying to me—80.25 meters is 263 feet, isn’t it?

So I shall now post a series of pix that show what it was like going through one lock. Then, I’ll show you so many various lock photos you’ll never want to see another lock picture the rest of this journey.

Don’t ask me what lock this was. A lot of them we entered at night, and I slept through them. I do think, however, that this was one of the six-in-a-row locks.

This lock is flooded. It will lower us after we are inside.



See how the water level behind the gate is higher than outside? No pumps--the lock operator pushes a button and valves either flood or empty the lock, thereby raising or lowering the boats.

That was an open lock—no bridge or arch to pass under. Here’s a lock that had an arch:

Suck it in,people. By the way, this is the sundeck--the one I thought I didn't have a picture of.




The boat ties up to one side of the lock.
This balcony could maybe use a bit of TLC.

In this one, we’re following another boat out of a lock:

And some had drawbridges over one end:

Some had some interesting features added:







I don't know what this is. It might be a hydroelectric generating facility, as several of the locks had them adjacent to them.

Some of the locks were very plain, some looked relatively new, and some were exquisite. This gate was being raised or lowered. I thought the round gears in the sidewall were fascinating, as well as the twilight colors.





Had enough of locks? Ready to get to the good stuff? Okay, sunset for now.