by Elizabeth

Our trip through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway feels like it finally got started after visiting Vladimir/Suzdal.  Prior to that, we’d had an overnight train from Saint Petersburg to Moscow that left late in the evening and arrived early morning, as well as a 2 hour trip from Moscow to Vladimir.  Our trip from Vladimir to Ekaterinburg on the other hand was a full 23 hours!  We’ll cover our train experience in an upcoming post, since at this point it feels like we’re living in two separate universes — train life and town life.

You can stop looking.  We found Pikachu in Ekaterinburg.

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by Michael (with substantial content written by Elizabeth — thanks!)

Our guidebook and various websites on the Trans-Siberian Railroad suggest that travelers visit some of the preserved old towns outside of Moscow. Since the towns are filled with glittering churches and because Russians are obsessed with all concepts ring- or circle-related, they have nicknamed these towns the “Golden Ring.” Looking for a taste of life outside of Russia’s main cities we heeded this advice, stopping off first in Vladimir (on the main train line) and then Suzdal (not on the train line) to see cute towns and old churches.

The train to Vladimir was easy enough; it was a bit less than two hours from Moscow, and after a bit of searching for luggage lockers at the Vladimir train station (we found none) we located an attended room with baggage storage in the basement. We opted to store our luggage after getting off our morning train to Vladimir so that we could visit Vladimir and surrounds before continuing on to Suzdal to spend the night.

Our first item of business was to catch a local bus out to the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, a small church on a smaller hill in the middle of a floodplain near Bogolyubov (about 12km northeast of Vladimir). We were pleasantly surprised at how frequent the bus service for this rural route ran — we missed a bus and only had to wait about 10 minutes for the next bus (#152) to arrive.  The church is something of a pilgrimage site (I think) and we were greeted in the small town of Bogolyubov by a couple of nuns handing out hot tea and fried dough (perfect for a cold, drizzly day). 

Monastery in the middle of Bogolyubov — this is where we ran into the tea-serving nuns.

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by Michael

Getting off our overnight train, the first thing we noticed was that Moscow is colder than St. Petersburg. We were visiting from September 16-18, so hardly winter. By the end we were talking about caps and gloves.

That didn’t stop us from enjoying the sights. Having traveled for about five months at this point, we are a bit “palaced-out” and “museumed-out” so fancy rooms and great paintings aren’t as much of a draw. Despite this, the Moscow Kremlin was a great half-day. The artifacts, jewels, and clothing in the Armory is impressive. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the dresses — apparently one Tsarina fainted five times during her marriage ceremony from her tight corset.

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Looking for a taste of Russia beyond Saint Petersburg, we planned a day trip to Vyborg (pronounced Vee-bork), near the border with Finland. Vyborg was part of Finland for large parts of its history, and although Stalin deported all of the Finns after the Great Patriotic War, it is now is a common day trip for Finnish tourists on the weekends.

There’s a “fast” train that has only a few stops and takes about an hour and a half from Saint Petersburg, so we got up early enough to catch it. We were careful on timing — not realizing ahead of time that we could use kiosks (in English) instead of the ticket window (not in English) — so we ended up with an hour for coffee and a walk around Lenin Square before our train left.

The Revolution is officially over? Or the Revolution is officially “over there”?

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by Michael

We originally planned to visit Russia because we wanted to take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing. We added Saint Petersburg, which isn’t technically on the Trans-Siberian Railway line, because we would already be in Russia and everyone we talked with that had been said it was great. We had no idea we would end up staying for seven days.

Views from the Summer Gardens — one of the many beautiful gardens that we visited during our stay.

But a couple things happened, one that we underestimated the importance of and one we didn’t expect: money and beer.

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