(Please back date to 2/24/13)
I stated yesterday that I was picked up at the station by my hosts in Ekaterinburg. This is the first time I have tried couch surfing. For those of you who are not familiar with this concept (it was only recently made known to me as well) couch surfing is a relatively new phenomenon to hit the budget travel crowd. It centers around a website by the same name and, with an account, you can search an area that you want to travel to and write to people that live there to see if they will host you. The idea is that people want to help out budget travelers by offering them a "couch" to sleep on for free, or a bed, or a floor, whatever. Budget travelers are not picky (I'm not picky). Couch surfing is also good, not only because it is free, but it puts you in contact with a local, someone who can give you the lowdown of the place and if available, join you around town. So, if you don't mind meeting and depending on strangers and being flexible on where you sleep, it can be an excellent way to travel.
In theory I am couch surfing here in Ekaterinburg but I managed to circumvent all the rules. In fact, I've never even been to the website. The Tivikovas are friends of a Russian girl, Helen, that I met in Beijing when she (a couch surfing "hoster") hosted some German friends of mine for a few days. We all went out for Peking duck and after telling her that I was traveling to Russia and was having a hard time finding cheap places to stay, Helen dipped into her network of friends in Russia and found Lilia willing and able to host me while I traveled to Ekaterinburg. Helen put us in contact and it all worked out.
As I mentioned yesterday, when I pulled into Ekaterinburg station at 11PM last night, Lilia, her husband Sasha, and Sasha's cousin Olga and her boyfriend Pasho, all came to the station platform to greet me to the city, large "Stephen" sign in hand. They helped me with my bags and we hopped into their car to their apartment not far from the city center. I hadn’t realize it, but yesterday also happened to be what used to be known as Soviet Army Day in Russia, now known as Defender of the Fatherland Day since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is a day that in practice is generally for men. It's like men's day. Women in Russia have a day as well but the 23rd of February is for the guys. Women usually present their significant others with a gift and everyone usually celebrates with friends. This is why Olga and Pasho were visiting Lilia and Sasha. Lilia had baked a cake for Sasha that morning and they were waiting for me to celebrate further that evening. When we arrived at the apartment last night, they broke out some beers and the rest of the cake, and started to cook some Russian pizzas. The pizzas were excellent, made like normal pizzas but with Russian toppings like spicy sausages (that are well known around Russia - especially on the trains. I've grown quite fond of them myself) and gherkins. Pickles on a pizza. It’s pretty good.
We socialized awhile, I got tell my story, and we talked on a matter of subjects from politics (again, Russians and their politics, Pasho particularly enjoyed my thoughts on Obama) to gun laws in the US, to music. After we had our fill (it was pretty late), Olga and Pasho left and Lilia and Sasha showed me where I could sleep. They live in a really nice, spacious apartment, in a high rise not far from the main, downtown area of the city. The apartment was handed down to them from family (but is being sold soon for a more size appropriate place) and so I had a number of rooms to choose from. My room has windows wrapping around half of the room that offers panoramic views of the city and I have my own bed. I'm living large.
Sasha and Lilia were married about a year ago, honeymooning across Italy. They are roughly the same age as me. Lilia just finished up a degree at the local university having done previous work as a journalist for a local newspaper. Now she's furthering her education to specialize in public relations which she hope will get her an opportunity to work in the public relations department of the Olympic Committee in Sochi for the next winter Olympics. She's in the process of applying now and apparently is making progress. Lilia was born into a military family and has moved around a lot growing up (like me). She was born in Kamchatka (yikes! You should Google map this place if you're not familiar) and has spent much of her life in the Far East, especially in Khaborovsk (which is how she knows Helen). But now she lives in Ekaterinburg, having moved there to study, and stayed there after her marriage. She is tall, has long, straight, blonde hair, blue eyes, and has a very bubbly, outgoing personality.
Sasha is a computer programmer who works at a nearby plant called Avtomatic which produces mechanical parts for rockets in support of the Russian space program. He writes codes that automate machines that make parts for these rockets and other machines, basically. He says his level of work doesn’t require a security clearance but that a lot of the engineers who design the machines that he makes parts for are huge security risks and are not allowed to leave the country. (Security clearances are for the birds - I’ve said this all along.) He is originally from Ekaterinburg and has lived his whole life in this city. He is thin, not very tall, has long blond hair, blue eyes, and a goatee grown only from the chin in some length. When we first met, he was wearing a big Russian fur hat and an army fatigue, olive green jacket. He likes classic rock, both American and Russian, has a very extensive and impressive collection of record vinyls, and makes paper models of planes and helicopters as a hobby. His English is very good and does a lot of translating for me. Together, they make a fun pair and their hospitality has been overwhelming.
We woke up a little later than usual. The sun here in Ekaterinburg starts coming up around 9 (it has risen at a different time in each place I've been, annoyingly...) so the days here start a bit slowly. I had discussed my plans for the two full days that I have with them the night before, basically that I want to spend one day focusing on the Romanov family history, seeing the cathedral that was built over the house that was demolished where the family was murdered and then to go to Ganina Yama, the site deep in the forest outside the city where the family was buried (or rather disposed of) and now is home to an orthodox monastery and memorial to the Tsar and his family. And the other day to do a day trip, 40 km outside the city, to a place called Pervoraulsk which has the original monument commemorating the border between Asia and Europe and where Tsar Alexander II famously drank a glass of wine on either side. They liked my ideas and since it was Sunday and they both had the day off, they decided they would join me for a drive out of the city to Ganina Yama, Sasha had never been.
The three of us made a small breakfast of yoghurt and coffee and then we hopped in Lilia’s small Suzuki sedan and drove north out of the city. We listened to “сплин” on CD, a Russian alternative rock band whose name when pronounced in English sounds like “spleen”, the organ. I forget what it means in Russian but it’s more musically appropriate I was assured. As we drove into the less dense suburbs that quickly became forest, Lilia offhandedly pointed out that there is a blacksmith who lives in a cabin deep in the woods by himself. He is famous in the city for producing the highest quality wares and runs a small blacksmithing school, also in the woods, where he teaches the “old methods” of the craft. She said he’s sort of an urban myth, but that he’s probably there. I like to think he’s there.
We briefly made a stop for gas at a Gazprom station, the world’s largest oil producer, a Russian company, where Lilia started the pump and Sasha got out to pay the teller through a little drop box from a window into the teller’s office (they don’t like to be bothered by the cold). We got back in the car and continued. We passed an old military yard that, over time, had collected heaps of green military vehicles, and tanks, and other types of machinery. Sasha told me that Ekaterinburg used to be a major producer of military machines, especially tanks, in World War II, and many of these scrap yards can be seen today scattered throughout the city. Ekaterinburg served the war by making heavy machinery mainly because of its location along the Trans-Siberian railroad. Ekaterinburg is the first major city and railway hub going east out of European Russia, where most of the war was fought, and sits just on the other side of the Ural Mountains. A strategic spot for military manufacturing and shipment.
After another half hour of driving into the woods I made a remark that I had been traveling through these woods, in the Siberian taiga, for over a week now and that I still don’t get tired of looking at the trees. They really are beautiful in their monotony. Sasha said that he agreed that they were beautiful but that they were also tricky. It happens frequently, he said, that local villagers head into the forest to search for mushrooms and are easily disoriented by the trees and often get lost, dangerous in such a wild and large place. I could see how that could happen. Continuing further we finally arrived in the isolated setting of Ganina Yama, the name given to the Orthodox monastery in memory of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family (wife Alexandra, and children Olga, Maria, Tatyana, Anastasia, and Alexei).
Quick history lesson: Nicholas II was the last tsar of Imperial Russia when in the early 20th century, much of the country had rebelled against the imperial powers led by the Bolsheviks, young reformers under the influence of people like Vladimir Lenin, who wanted a communist style of government to spread the wealth of the nation across to the masses. During the period of fighting, Nicholas and his family were moved to Ekaterinburg from St. Petersburg, their home, in order to protect them from the revolution that was destroying the city but instead he and his entire family were brutally murdered by some over-eager Bolsheviks in the basement of a small house near the lake in the city center. Then, in an effort to hide the deed, they brought the bodies out to the place where we were visiting, Ganina Yama, deep in the forest, and “disposed” of the bodies, eliminating them rather than burying them through various means.
But although the Bolsheviks were leading a popular movement, this deed of brutality went overboard, so to speak, and much of the country mourned the generally favorable family - they had been the most tame and least radical of Tsarist families and were big supporters of the Othodox church. So the family, in the church, are regarded in a saintly way today. And on this site they created a very beautiful monastery. The grounds are covered in snow and consist of small wooden chapels constructed in what I can only describe as in the gingerbread house style of architecture topped with small golden onion domes. The place is serene and lovely. We walked around the somber grounds and visited some of the chapels. In the back of the site there was a long wall that displayed picturse from the early 1900’s of the tsar and his family. They made him and his family look like very ordinary people: going for walks, playing tennis, taking rides in the lake in rowboats. And they had built a wooden walkway that hovered aboveground in a horseshoe shape like a covered bridge around the actual site where the bodies were left. It was an incredible morning.
When we left the monastery, we were approached by a woman, a pious one by the look of her dress, who asked for a ride back into the city. She was going to the Church Upon the Blood, the cathedral they built over the site of the now paved-over basement where the family was murdered. Lilia agreed and said that we could also visit the cathedral, completing our Romanov history day in one sweep.
The Church Upon the Blood Cathedral was built only a few years ago and is so named because it was built on top of the basement where the Romanov family was murdered. The orthodox cathedral is meant to be a place of pilgrimage for the pious and when we were there, hundreds of churchgoers were as well. The cathedral is the largest church in the city and is decorated inside with hundreds of glittering paintings of the saints and of the family members themselves. It is a beautiful place. But we stayed only a short time because Sasha had received a phone call a little earlier from his parents inviting the three of us to dinner at their apartment on the other side of the city. I was thrilled at this idea - a home cooked meal of authentic Russian food with some genuine Russian hospitality.
And I was not disappointed. I met Sasha’s parents (whose names I can’t remember, sorry Sasha’s parents!), a short man with white hair and a white beard and a small woman whom you could think of as the original Russian mother. They invited us to sit at a small table in the living area and Sasha told my story to his parents (his parents could speak a little English but it was much easier for Sasha to repeat the story in Russian). His father seemed impressed by my military background (as most Russians are when they find out, Russia is still quite a militarized place, even amongst the youth) and he offered me a shot of his best vodka, a gift from Lilia’s parents on a trip they had taken. The vodka was from a small village in the Siberian taiga and was the color of whiskey. We toasted a round to me and my travels and the vodka went down smoothly.
Then we ate a glorious feast of Russian food, prepared by Sasha’s mother, of salad as a starter (pickled cabbage and potato salad, colored purple) and followed by a goulash soup (a red colored broth with potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and a big piece of beef), followed by a cabbage pie (a large pie crust filled with salty cabbage), and lastly a round of roasted chicken stuffed with apples. We drank dry, Russian, red wine with the food. I hadn’t eaten this much in a very, very long time. My stomach was bursting.
Afterwards, Sasha’s mother showed me a collection of homemade Russian dolls made from fabric that she creates as a hobby. She told me the story (translated by Sasha) of what each doll meant and stood for: happiness, prosperity, long life, etc. And then she offered me a few as a gift. I was overwhelmed with the offer and gladly accepted three dolls and one push-pin cat. One of the dolls was specifically given to me because I told her I had a sister and she instructed me to give it to her when I got home (so Rachel, if you’re reading this, you have a Russian doll coming your way. It is a doll specifically created for female family members and it represents happiness). And afterwards Sasha’s father showed me some of his paper models of an old Russian frigate and a German U-Boat submarine (this is where Sasha gets his hobby from I think). I could not have had a better time.
With leftovers in hand we bid Sasha’s parents a warm farewell and left for home. I had wanted to walk around the city a bit before heading back so following a quick driving tour of the downtown area, they dropped me off at the city square and I walked around for a few hours before heading back to the apartment later that night. The city itself is quite beautiful and it had been snowing almost constantly since I arrived. I paid a visit to the Metenkov House Museum of Photography which had an interesting exhibit on photographs, both old and new, of Russia’s ballet scene. But after a few hours of museum gazing and walking around in the cold, I took the tram back to the apartment.
Pasho and Olga had returned that evening (Pasho had accidentally left his cell phone in the apartment and had to return anyway) and we ate some of the leftovers from earlier in the day. Then we talked for awhile over tea. But that evening and into late into the night, we all sat in the living room and played a slideshow over Sasha’s digital projector of my photos from my travels. The projector projects the images onto the far wall of the living room which blows up the photos to huge sizes. It is a very cool set up. We walked through my China travels and into Mongolia before it got too late and everyone retired. It was an action packed day.
The plan for day two (which is a workday for Sasha and a study day for Lilia so they will not be joining me) is to venture out on a day trip to a small town called Pervoraulsk, 40 km outside the city, which is supposed to have a monument that marks the border of Europe and Asia. The directions are not too specific but I’m going to wing it. We’ll see what I find!
I stated yesterday that I was picked up at the station by my hosts in Ekaterinburg. This is the first time I have tried couch surfing. For those of you who are not familiar with this concept (it was only recently made known to me as well) couch surfing is a relatively new phenomenon to hit the budget travel crowd. It centers around a website by the same name and, with an account, you can search an area that you want to travel to and write to people that live there to see if they will host you. The idea is that people want to help out budget travelers by offering them a "couch" to sleep on for free, or a bed, or a floor, whatever. Budget travelers are not picky (I'm not picky). Couch surfing is also good, not only because it is free, but it puts you in contact with a local, someone who can give you the lowdown of the place and if available, join you around town. So, if you don't mind meeting and depending on strangers and being flexible on where you sleep, it can be an excellent way to travel.
In theory I am couch surfing here in Ekaterinburg but I managed to circumvent all the rules. In fact, I've never even been to the website. The Tivikovas are friends of a Russian girl, Helen, that I met in Beijing when she (a couch surfing "hoster") hosted some German friends of mine for a few days. We all went out for Peking duck and after telling her that I was traveling to Russia and was having a hard time finding cheap places to stay, Helen dipped into her network of friends in Russia and found Lilia willing and able to host me while I traveled to Ekaterinburg. Helen put us in contact and it all worked out.
As I mentioned yesterday, when I pulled into Ekaterinburg station at 11PM last night, Lilia, her husband Sasha, and Sasha's cousin Olga and her boyfriend Pasho, all came to the station platform to greet me to the city, large "Stephen" sign in hand. They helped me with my bags and we hopped into their car to their apartment not far from the city center. I hadn’t realize it, but yesterday also happened to be what used to be known as Soviet Army Day in Russia, now known as Defender of the Fatherland Day since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is a day that in practice is generally for men. It's like men's day. Women in Russia have a day as well but the 23rd of February is for the guys. Women usually present their significant others with a gift and everyone usually celebrates with friends. This is why Olga and Pasho were visiting Lilia and Sasha. Lilia had baked a cake for Sasha that morning and they were waiting for me to celebrate further that evening. When we arrived at the apartment last night, they broke out some beers and the rest of the cake, and started to cook some Russian pizzas. The pizzas were excellent, made like normal pizzas but with Russian toppings like spicy sausages (that are well known around Russia - especially on the trains. I've grown quite fond of them myself) and gherkins. Pickles on a pizza. It’s pretty good.
We socialized awhile, I got tell my story, and we talked on a matter of subjects from politics (again, Russians and their politics, Pasho particularly enjoyed my thoughts on Obama) to gun laws in the US, to music. After we had our fill (it was pretty late), Olga and Pasho left and Lilia and Sasha showed me where I could sleep. They live in a really nice, spacious apartment, in a high rise not far from the main, downtown area of the city. The apartment was handed down to them from family (but is being sold soon for a more size appropriate place) and so I had a number of rooms to choose from. My room has windows wrapping around half of the room that offers panoramic views of the city and I have my own bed. I'm living large.
Sasha and Lilia were married about a year ago, honeymooning across Italy. They are roughly the same age as me. Lilia just finished up a degree at the local university having done previous work as a journalist for a local newspaper. Now she's furthering her education to specialize in public relations which she hope will get her an opportunity to work in the public relations department of the Olympic Committee in Sochi for the next winter Olympics. She's in the process of applying now and apparently is making progress. Lilia was born into a military family and has moved around a lot growing up (like me). She was born in Kamchatka (yikes! You should Google map this place if you're not familiar) and has spent much of her life in the Far East, especially in Khaborovsk (which is how she knows Helen). But now she lives in Ekaterinburg, having moved there to study, and stayed there after her marriage. She is tall, has long, straight, blonde hair, blue eyes, and has a very bubbly, outgoing personality.
Sasha is a computer programmer who works at a nearby plant called Avtomatic which produces mechanical parts for rockets in support of the Russian space program. He writes codes that automate machines that make parts for these rockets and other machines, basically. He says his level of work doesn’t require a security clearance but that a lot of the engineers who design the machines that he makes parts for are huge security risks and are not allowed to leave the country. (Security clearances are for the birds - I’ve said this all along.) He is originally from Ekaterinburg and has lived his whole life in this city. He is thin, not very tall, has long blond hair, blue eyes, and a goatee grown only from the chin in some length. When we first met, he was wearing a big Russian fur hat and an army fatigue, olive green jacket. He likes classic rock, both American and Russian, has a very extensive and impressive collection of record vinyls, and makes paper models of planes and helicopters as a hobby. His English is very good and does a lot of translating for me. Together, they make a fun pair and their hospitality has been overwhelming.
We woke up a little later than usual. The sun here in Ekaterinburg starts coming up around 9 (it has risen at a different time in each place I've been, annoyingly...) so the days here start a bit slowly. I had discussed my plans for the two full days that I have with them the night before, basically that I want to spend one day focusing on the Romanov family history, seeing the cathedral that was built over the house that was demolished where the family was murdered and then to go to Ganina Yama, the site deep in the forest outside the city where the family was buried (or rather disposed of) and now is home to an orthodox monastery and memorial to the Tsar and his family. And the other day to do a day trip, 40 km outside the city, to a place called Pervoraulsk which has the original monument commemorating the border between Asia and Europe and where Tsar Alexander II famously drank a glass of wine on either side. They liked my ideas and since it was Sunday and they both had the day off, they decided they would join me for a drive out of the city to Ganina Yama, Sasha had never been.
The three of us made a small breakfast of yoghurt and coffee and then we hopped in Lilia’s small Suzuki sedan and drove north out of the city. We listened to “сплин” on CD, a Russian alternative rock band whose name when pronounced in English sounds like “spleen”, the organ. I forget what it means in Russian but it’s more musically appropriate I was assured. As we drove into the less dense suburbs that quickly became forest, Lilia offhandedly pointed out that there is a blacksmith who lives in a cabin deep in the woods by himself. He is famous in the city for producing the highest quality wares and runs a small blacksmithing school, also in the woods, where he teaches the “old methods” of the craft. She said he’s sort of an urban myth, but that he’s probably there. I like to think he’s there.
We briefly made a stop for gas at a Gazprom station, the world’s largest oil producer, a Russian company, where Lilia started the pump and Sasha got out to pay the teller through a little drop box from a window into the teller’s office (they don’t like to be bothered by the cold). We got back in the car and continued. We passed an old military yard that, over time, had collected heaps of green military vehicles, and tanks, and other types of machinery. Sasha told me that Ekaterinburg used to be a major producer of military machines, especially tanks, in World War II, and many of these scrap yards can be seen today scattered throughout the city. Ekaterinburg served the war by making heavy machinery mainly because of its location along the Trans-Siberian railroad. Ekaterinburg is the first major city and railway hub going east out of European Russia, where most of the war was fought, and sits just on the other side of the Ural Mountains. A strategic spot for military manufacturing and shipment.
After another half hour of driving into the woods I made a remark that I had been traveling through these woods, in the Siberian taiga, for over a week now and that I still don’t get tired of looking at the trees. They really are beautiful in their monotony. Sasha said that he agreed that they were beautiful but that they were also tricky. It happens frequently, he said, that local villagers head into the forest to search for mushrooms and are easily disoriented by the trees and often get lost, dangerous in such a wild and large place. I could see how that could happen. Continuing further we finally arrived in the isolated setting of Ganina Yama, the name given to the Orthodox monastery in memory of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family (wife Alexandra, and children Olga, Maria, Tatyana, Anastasia, and Alexei).
Quick history lesson: Nicholas II was the last tsar of Imperial Russia when in the early 20th century, much of the country had rebelled against the imperial powers led by the Bolsheviks, young reformers under the influence of people like Vladimir Lenin, who wanted a communist style of government to spread the wealth of the nation across to the masses. During the period of fighting, Nicholas and his family were moved to Ekaterinburg from St. Petersburg, their home, in order to protect them from the revolution that was destroying the city but instead he and his entire family were brutally murdered by some over-eager Bolsheviks in the basement of a small house near the lake in the city center. Then, in an effort to hide the deed, they brought the bodies out to the place where we were visiting, Ganina Yama, deep in the forest, and “disposed” of the bodies, eliminating them rather than burying them through various means.
But although the Bolsheviks were leading a popular movement, this deed of brutality went overboard, so to speak, and much of the country mourned the generally favorable family - they had been the most tame and least radical of Tsarist families and were big supporters of the Othodox church. So the family, in the church, are regarded in a saintly way today. And on this site they created a very beautiful monastery. The grounds are covered in snow and consist of small wooden chapels constructed in what I can only describe as in the gingerbread house style of architecture topped with small golden onion domes. The place is serene and lovely. We walked around the somber grounds and visited some of the chapels. In the back of the site there was a long wall that displayed picturse from the early 1900’s of the tsar and his family. They made him and his family look like very ordinary people: going for walks, playing tennis, taking rides in the lake in rowboats. And they had built a wooden walkway that hovered aboveground in a horseshoe shape like a covered bridge around the actual site where the bodies were left. It was an incredible morning.
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| One of the "ginger bread house" chapels at Ganina Yama |
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| A picture of Tsar Nicholas II and his family from the imperial photography exhibit at Ganina Yama |
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| Sasha and Lilia Tivikova, my hosts in Ekaterinburg |
The Church Upon the Blood Cathedral was built only a few years ago and is so named because it was built on top of the basement where the Romanov family was murdered. The orthodox cathedral is meant to be a place of pilgrimage for the pious and when we were there, hundreds of churchgoers were as well. The cathedral is the largest church in the city and is decorated inside with hundreds of glittering paintings of the saints and of the family members themselves. It is a beautiful place. But we stayed only a short time because Sasha had received a phone call a little earlier from his parents inviting the three of us to dinner at their apartment on the other side of the city. I was thrilled at this idea - a home cooked meal of authentic Russian food with some genuine Russian hospitality.
 |
| Church Upon the Blood, commemorating the site of the Romanov family massacre |
Then we ate a glorious feast of Russian food, prepared by Sasha’s mother, of salad as a starter (pickled cabbage and potato salad, colored purple) and followed by a goulash soup (a red colored broth with potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and a big piece of beef), followed by a cabbage pie (a large pie crust filled with salty cabbage), and lastly a round of roasted chicken stuffed with apples. We drank dry, Russian, red wine with the food. I hadn’t eaten this much in a very, very long time. My stomach was bursting.
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| Sasha's parents made us dinner of salad, borscht, cabbage pie, and roast chicken |
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| Sacha, Lilia, and Sasha's parents over dinner |
With leftovers in hand we bid Sasha’s parents a warm farewell and left for home. I had wanted to walk around the city a bit before heading back so following a quick driving tour of the downtown area, they dropped me off at the city square and I walked around for a few hours before heading back to the apartment later that night. The city itself is quite beautiful and it had been snowing almost constantly since I arrived. I paid a visit to the Metenkov House Museum of Photography which had an interesting exhibit on photographs, both old and new, of Russia’s ballet scene. But after a few hours of museum gazing and walking around in the cold, I took the tram back to the apartment.
Pasho and Olga had returned that evening (Pasho had accidentally left his cell phone in the apartment and had to return anyway) and we ate some of the leftovers from earlier in the day. Then we talked for awhile over tea. But that evening and into late into the night, we all sat in the living room and played a slideshow over Sasha’s digital projector of my photos from my travels. The projector projects the images onto the far wall of the living room which blows up the photos to huge sizes. It is a very cool set up. We walked through my China travels and into Mongolia before it got too late and everyone retired. It was an action packed day.
The plan for day two (which is a workday for Sasha and a study day for Lilia so they will not be joining me) is to venture out on a day trip to a small town called Pervoraulsk, 40 km outside the city, which is supposed to have a monument that marks the border of Europe and Asia. The directions are not too specific but I’m going to wing it. We’ll see what I find!
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