On our way
Shortly after my post last night we caught a bit on 'euronews' about the protesting pensioners in Russia. Turns out its a multi-city demonstration, and we happened upon the St. Petersburg one last night. Tonight, there was another demonstration in the same place--this time the pensioners were joined by the young communist party, yabloko. So we got to see a little bit of history in the making.
We spent the morning touring around St. Petersburg in the dark, and watched the sunrise on the neva, reflecting in the spires of the Peter and Paul fortress. It was fantastic and the city was so quiet.
We were at the doors when the Hermitage opened and passed a lovely couple of hours wandering around the halls. We saw Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh...all the gems of the museum. It was positively delightful, for it was almost empty that early on a sunday morning.
Tomorrow, we're off to Solovki. A cab will come and pick us up at 630am, we'll fly at 840am, arrive some 2+ hours later in Arkhangelsk, and then hop on a 45 minute flight to Solovetsky Island. To be totally honest, I'm a little concerned about all the flying...but I'm sure Pulkovo and Aeroflot airlines are up to the test!
No internet on Solovki...so I'll be taking pictures and thinking of you guys. We'll be back to St.Petersburg on the night of the 21st, so I'll catch you up then.
posted by Allison at 2:27 PM
3 Comments:
Allison and Ellen's plane from St. Petersburg to Archangelus arrived 8 minutes late (Pulkovo Airlines) around 4 a.m. eastern standard time on Monday. Their flight on Aeroflot North from Archangelus to Solovetsky Island is scheduled to depart Monday at 5:30 a.m. I haven't found an information source on the web to tell me anything about Aeroflot North so I'll have to wait until they return to St. Petersburg or they find a telephone somewhere. And so begins the adventurous portion of their oddysey.
I have heard confirmation (on Wednesday morning, 1/19) from the travel agent in Moscow that Ellen and Allison arrived timely at Solovetsky. It reads:
I got an email from our partner in the North, that your family arrived well in Solovki!
Furthermore, I heard that there are two further tourists from America for the same period. So, they will have company if they like.
He also pointed out that I shouldn't be surprised not to hear from them as telephone service there is almost non-existant. Hard to believe in this world of technology, but it _is_ Siberia, isn't it?
While we're all hanging out here, waiting the return of the Siberian trekkers, I thought I'd try to amuse us. Following is a blog I wrote in June of 2003 when we went to St. Petersburg to meet with Allison at the end of her semester stay there. It seemed appropriate as it describes my take on babushki.
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Let me introduce you to the Babushka. I don't know if this is a correct appellation for them. It is what Allison calls them and how others, too, refer to them. The word means grandmother, but here we mean the women who sit in chairs in each room of all museums. They are mostly grandmothers or, if not, they are around the age of grandmothers. They are mean grandmothers-the kind who tell a child to “finish your plate, don't talk back and stop running and shouting.” That was their job among children and the role they continue to enact among the adults they supervise daily.
I believe they work within a Guild. A Guild that has a secret handshake and vows to instill in others the greatest height of human dispirit possible to achieve. That is the apex, the summit, the off-the-scale hyperbola and the reason for their existence. Their greatest accomplishment is to bar doorways masking as ticket-takers. It's not the ticket they want, it's the strength and glory they derive in preventing your entrance or at least to prolong your entrance for as long as possible. Such is the wielding of their power in its simplest form. It is exhibited with great skill and very little grace. Ivan the Terrible is to Prince Charming as the babushka is to a cocktail waitress.
I have seen few Russians succeed who vigorously try to best the babushka. It requires virtuosic art calling forth the most practiced forms of the full body shove and hip-check. A Japanese sumo would lose footing pitted against the frustrated Russian civilian cum woman hockey player who seeks to win out and counter the instruction of a babushka. I have seen the brawniest stud male, who would otherwise strut and preen and radiate strength, cower in such a woman’s wrath. So truly artful and practiced a middle-aged woman (probably an ex-babushka herself) will sweep by with élan all the while delivering a most voluble dissent to those in the crowd who would seek not to let her pass. She comes finally to face two broad-bosomed babushki who bar her way. She is let to pass. Amazing! She has shown direct refusal to obey and yet she is let to pass by two stalwart babushki. I believe it has to be the secret handshake, or wink, or merely her strength of carriage that takes the day. Or perhaps it's just the respect this engenders among kindred spirits.
The babushka is a woman we all have seen in the photograph of the big-bodied, heavily bedecked older woman of the Soviet period. She is straight-backed and festooned with sashes, her bosom made greater still by the vast collection of ribbons and medals she carries. She walks parade style, proudly; head erect, eyes straight ahead, her bosom cannon-aimed. Though she is no longer medal-festooned it is she we see when we look at the ticket-taking babushka.
Let’s visit a few palaces. What a treat! More babushki to engage with in the world's fastest-growing interactive sport, babushki-baiting. No, not in the way that will come first to your mind. This is respectful baiting; turn-the-other-cheek baiting (a dangerous practice when dealing with a babushka). The challenge is to see whether one can make a babushka smile. Now, mind you, this is not easy. The strongest, most experienced Beefeater of the Queen's Home Guard standing sentry at the palace gates of London is more likely to crack a smile than even the least trained of babushki. Babushka-baiting is not for the faint of heart. As I approach this experiment I shall be as Don Quixote. Sancho, Sanchooo, where are you? I need you!
What a day! I have actually caused a babushka at the Hermitage, the coliseum of all babushka battlefields, almost to chuckle. Mind you, had I actually accomplished the feat and got her to chuckle aloud she would instantly have been melted to slag by Thor's thunderbolt sent straight from the Norse collection on the third floor.
How, ask you, did this come to pass? Well, sonny, I'm glad you asked.
I had just passed through the four hundred and eleventh room of abstract expressionist paintings. I was feeling a bit dizzied and weary having seen enough spiraling, cubic, rhombic, rectangular and solid-colored or blank canvases. It quite caused me to be mentally absent. It’s easy to understand how, while standing next to a shoulder-high statue, I absent-mindedly rested my elbow on its pedestal; the pedestal mind you, not the statue itself. The quartz clock at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in Washington had not yet registered one pulse when all the family instantly turned to me and Allison snapped out, "Dad, what are you thinking?"
My elbow flew from that searing, suddenly four-thousand-degree slab of marble. Well, don't you know, that babushka, right there in her seat, no farther than three feet from my rump, cracked a smile--and very nearly a chuckle. She did! It was faint. It was brief. It was very embarrassing for her, but there it was. Real. A smile! And for a tiny moment she glowed pink and warm. I like to think that she remembers that day.
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