Sailing

With our trip to Russia behind us, on Saturday we finally had time to practice what we learned in our sailing classes. Our friend Pavel is a certified skipper, so we rented a 27' boat through his sailing club for the day.

Unfortunately it was pretty calm in the morning. We ended up motoring across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island, where we stopped for lunch in Eagle Harbor. The wind picked up nicely in the afternoon, though, so we were able to sail all the way back home - getting some spectacular views of Seattle (and a passing cruise ship) along the way. There are pictures here.

St. Petersburg

This is the fifth and final entry about our trip. Our photos from St Petersburg are here - it's a pretty impressive place, which means we took a lot of pictures. Pace yourself; there are a lot of great ones, but some of the best are towards the end.

When Peter the Great, one of the most influential Russians in history, became Tsar in 1684 he undertook a series of sweeping changes aimed at modernizing and strengthening what became the Russian Empire. In 1703, after winning a chunk of land from arch-rival Sweden, Peter, apparently none too fond of Moscow - decided that Russia needed a new capitol.

The spot was chosen because of its strategic importance: Russia could finally have a real seaport (Arkhangelsk, ice-bound every winter up on the White Sea, wasn't cutting it anymore). St. Petersburg was founded where the Neva River empties into the Gulf of Finland, a small offshoot of the Baltic Sea.

Peter had travelled extensively in Western Europe and decided that his new capitol should be built in the style of the great capitols of the West, and that it should surpass them in grandeur. He imported masons & architects from all over Europe to build the entire city out of stone. He ordered the Neoclassical buildings painted cheerful pastel colors (the weather is gray enough without the buildings adding to it), and he had a series of canals built to imitate Venice and Amsterdam.

In the city's center Peter built the spectacular Winter Palace, which is now part of the Hermitage Musuem, the largest and perhaps most beautiful art museum in the world. Outside the city he built Peterhof, his own version of the palaces and gardens of Versailles. Other Tsars followed this trend, and many of these beautiful places are now parks that are well worth the trouble to reach.

Upon arriving, the first impression I got of St. Petersburg (in Russian "Sankt Peterburg," or, more commonly, "Petersburg" or just "Piter") is that it is a monumental city. I mean that in two ways: first, the city itself - and everything in it - is huge. Forget the coziness of Venice or Amsterdam, this is a vast city designed to impress and, probably, to make you feel a little insignificant. If grandeur was the goal, Petersburg succeeds - and then some. The immense neighborhoods of Soviet housing blocks outside the center only add to the feeling of this being a city on a grand scale.

Petersburg is also monumental in that it's filled with monuments: war victories, politicians (especially Soviet ones), revolutionaries, authors, philosophers, composers, and poets. Even for a relatively young city - Philadelphia and New York, for example, are older - so many influential people and things happened in Petersburg that it's easy to lose track of them all.

Petersburg is also notable for being the world's northernmost large city (> 1 million people). For you geography buffs, it's at 60 degrees North - equivalent to Anchorage, AK. This means that June & July bring "white nights" where it stays light outside well past midnight (and gets bright again before 4am). The city seems to adjust its schedule and take advantage of this added light; it's a weird feeling to be walking around at 11pm, the sun still up, and the streets still filled with people going about as if it were late afternoon. I suppose they've got to make up for those short, cold winter days.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of the trip was getting to meet some great people: Anya's incomparable grandma (Babushka Raia), family friend Lena (privet, esli ti eto chitaesh!) and our super-hospitable host Boris.

Russia generally - and St Petersburg specifically - are places that any seasoned world traveller should visit. There are a lot fewer Americans (or tourists in general) than in Western Europe, which would make a solo trip there more challenging but more rewarding. Growing up in the States we're not taught much about Russian history or culture. That's unfortunate for us, but it makes visiting there that much more interesting and eye-opening.

Anyway, this blog entry has gotten long enough - congrats if you're still reading! I've added comments to many of the pictures in the photo album, so I'll let those do more explaining about the things we saw.

The Drive

This is the fourth entry about our trip. Start at "Copenhagen" below if you want to read them in order. Here are the few pictures we took along the way.

After a comfortable and relaxing time in Minsk, we were off to our next stop: St. Petersburg. We spent some time investigating and debating how to get there. That region is currently under-served by airlines after a couple of bankruptcies, so tickets were too expensive to make flying an option. It's a 14-hour overnight train ride, which is the method of choice for most people - but not us. We chose to drive the 800 kilometers (475 miles - roughly equivalent to Minneapolis to St Louis for you midwesterners) in a single day.

It turns out that roads in Belarus are very nice: they're well-maintained, well-marked, and have lots of little picnic grounds to stop at. We passed many cute little countryside villages with brightly-colored wood houses. We took a break in the very old (founded in 862 AD) town of Polatsk and saw the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, considered to be the most beautiful church in Belarus. This part of the drive was quite pleasant.

Then we got to Russia. There's no passport control between the two countries, but there's a $5 toll for the privilege of driving on an quarter-mile stretch of "international" road. After getting through this and into Russia proper, we discovered why taking the train is the preferred method of long-distance travel there.

The roads in Russia were in very poor condition: they don't appear to have had any maintenance at all since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are few or no signs telling you where to go (we got lost a couple times). The drivers are reckless to the point of being almost suicidal, and whatever traffic laws exist are universally ignored. Despite all this, we saw a number of police ticketing people for speeding - pretty clever when there aren't any speed limits posted.

Along the journey, we passed through several medium-sized towns - including Ostrov and Luga - that don't appear to have changed much from the Soviet days. They were interesting and almost kind of beautiful in a dilapidated, grim, the-world-has-forgotten-us sort of way.

We made our second stop in another historic town, Pskov. It has a walled old town/fortress that's in a nice setting along a river. It's the kind of place that could be a tourist destination if any investment were made in infrastructure (like signs telling you how to get around).

We were all pretty tired when, after 14 hours on the road, we arrived in Pushkin, the genteel town near St. Petersburg where we were staying (with a longtime friend of Anya's parents). While the roads are fine in & around St. Petersburg, it's clear that the less cross-country driving you do in Russia, the better.

Minsk

This is the third entry about our trip to northeastern Europe; see "Copenhagen" below to start from the beginning. Click here to see the picture album from our time in Minsk.

After having a great time in Vilnius, we crossed the border into Belarus and drove to Minsk, where Anya's parents live.

The border between Lithuania and Belarus is more than just political; it's a major cultural boundary as well - after crossing it you're in the Russian world. The comfortable Roman alphabet is replaced by Cyrillic. Orthodox iconography appears in place of familiar Catholic and Protestant styles. The Soviet hammer & sickle (so quickly replaced elsewhere with the staid blue & gold EU flag) - is still prominently displayed, less out of pride than an out of an acceptance of history. And although things have definitely changed since then, the weight of that history is still apparent.

Minsk is the capitol and, with about 2 million people, the largest city in Belarus. It was one of 12 Soviet "hero cities" in WWII, and its main boulevards are filled with monuments to the USSR's victory. Anya grew up in the city's center, but her parents have since moved to a small village just outside Minsk.

We spent the majority of our visit hanging out at their house. We had a fun but relaxing stay: eating, drinking, playing with the newborn puppies, enjoying the beautiful weather, and visiting the banya ("banya" is the Russian word for "sauna". Russian saunas are similar to American saunas except: a) they're more popular, b) they're much hotter, c) they're usually enjoyed with beer and salted fish, and d) they come with veniks. Check out the pictures to see what I mean).

Compared with my first visit there 4 years ago, Belarus seems to be prospering: there are far fewer dilapidated old Soviet-model cars, major road and subway improvements have been made, and previously-stalled construction on many new houses in the village has been completed.

From a traveler's perspective, Belarus is an interesting and different place. It's an order of magnitude more foreign than anywhere you'll find in Western Europe. It would be difficult to get by on your own in there without speaking at least some Russian and learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet. If you're planning to go there, however, I know of some great people to stay with...

Lithuania

This is the second part of a series of posts about our trip; see below to start at the beginning. The pictures for Lithuania are in this set.

After our layover in Copenhagen, we took a short flight to our ultimate destination: Vilnius, the capitol and largest city in Lithuania. Anya's parents met us there; they go there frequently and know their way around.

Lithuania and its neighbors Latvia and Estonia are collectively known as the Baltic Countries (they're on the Baltic Sea). Prior to 1990 they were in the Soviet Union, although their people maintain that beginning after WWII they were occupied by the Soviet Union and weren't willing members. After the collapse of the USSR, these three countries turned sharply westwards; they're now members of the EU, in the Schengen Zone (meaning you could drive from, say, Spain all the way to Estonia without having to show your passport), and will adopt the Euro for their currency in the next few years.

Vilnius' old town is beautiful, well-preserved, and thriving. It's the European Culture Capitol for 2009, meaning that it's seeing an influx of tourists - and deservedly so. Although it's a little too big to be called "cozy", it's definitely a comfortable, easy-going small city. It's filled with nice little cafés and bars, all serving good local beer and traditional Lithuanian beer snacks: fried dark bread with a light dusting of cheese (it's really good). There are plenty of beautiful old Catholic churches. The medieval architecture makes the city feel almost like an old Italian town, and the Lithuanian language - written in the Roman alphabet, not Cyrillic like Russian - looks & sounds a bit like Italian with the letter "s" added to the end of many words (in reality those languages are almost completely unrelated).

We also took a day trip to Trakai, a nearby town with a medieval castle/fortress built on an island in the middle of a lake. It was a scenic little place. We stopped at a traditional local pub for kibinai, little doughy pastry balls filled with various different meats, mushrooms, cabbage, or apples. Like elsewhere in northern Europe, vegetarians would have a tough time getting by in Lithuania: meat is the staple of every meal, albeit in much smaller portions than Americans are used to. (That's a good thing)

Being small and relatively out of the way, Vilnius probably isn't at the top of many Americans' vacation plans. But if Western Europe is a "been there, done that" proposition and you're looking to branch out, the Baltics would be a nice next step and a good primer before moving further east into the Russian-speaking world. That's where we were headed next.

Copenhagen

We just returned from our trip to northeastern Europe; this is the first of several posts regarding that trip.

While making our way to Belarus to visit Anya's parents, we had an 8-hour layover in Copenhagen, Denmark. As it turns out, it was a good choice for such a layover: the airport is a quick ride on the Metro from the city center, and Copenhagen is a nice little place to spend a few hours between flights. We wandered around the old city, had a nice Danish lunch (smørrebrød - open-faced sandwiches with salmon or herring), and had enough coffee to stay awake for the next leg of the journey.

Although I saw an admittedly small portion of the city, Copenhagen struck me as being a clean, safe, and efficiently run place. It's fairly small as European capitols go, but it seems like it would be a comfortable and easy place to live.

Here are a few pictures from the first leg of our trip (including Copenhagen).