Novgorod the Great - Part II

Luckily our disillusionment didn't last too long - just down the street I spotted our first medieval church of the day, unfortunately locked up tight and looking a little neglected and sad, but something interesting nonetheless! Despite its extra 700 or so years the church didn't actually look all that much more run-down from the outside than the surrounding 60s apartment buildings.

Further on we came to the monstrous Novgorod Duma (local government) building, its bombastic Stalinist facade painted in a supremely ugly colour scheme: off-beige and slime green, delicately set off with details in mud brown! Besides the name change and minus a few red flags, the place hadn’t changed in 15 years - Lenin still stood out front and a giant plaque of the Order of Lenin, the USSR’s most distinguished honour, hung proudly above the main doors. I love how so many government and education buildings here still maintain these giant colourful plaques of Soviet medals they received – the University’s Medical Institute still displays the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and even the Petersburg Metro has the Order of Lenin high on the wall at Gostinny Dvor Station.

Across the street from the Duma lay the Kremlin, its thick and ancient red brick walls and towers looking suitably impressive; Novgorod had after all been the real capital of medieval Russia, for nearly 500 years. Novgorod was home to most of Russia’s legendary medieval heroes such as Yaroslav the Wise and Alexander Nevsky, the great prince who defeated an invading Teutonic army on the banks of the Neva near modern Saint Petersburg (hence Nevsky Prospect). The independent Russian state of Novgorod was eventually defeated and annexed by Tsar Ivan III of rival Moscow, leading to centuries of declining importance, accelerated by Ivan the Terrible's destruction of the city after a failed rebellion (slaughtering 60,000 of its inhabitants - the guy wasn't called 'the Terrible' for nothing!) and the much later founding of nearby Saint Petersburg. Despite all it has suffered and lost over the centuries since its medieval greatness, it’s still an amazing place. Take a look at my photos here; they can explain better than I what Novgorod was like!

One of the things that amazed us nearly as much as the Kremlin and the multitude of medieval churches, was just how friendly the people in Novgorod were! Everyone we talked was so chatty, so eager to help, and smiley; so totally unlike Petersburg, such a pleasant and unexpected change! Aurelie kept saying, “I just want to stay in Novgorod! Everyone’s so nice here.” Even the waitress at the café was helpful and astoundingly, spoke English too – will wonders never cease! I’d almost forgotten that “customer service” still existed anywhere… I started to feel a little ashamed of my judgment of Russian people as unfriendly, indifferent, and downright rude. Like people who decide that all French people must be snooty and insufferably impudent because they went to Paris once and that’s how all the people there were, I think I made a similar faulty assumption about Russians because of my plethora of Petersburg experiences! It’s the big city effect at work - living in the big city seems to just make people short-tempered, inhospitable, and gruff, no matter what the country!

Aurelie almost had her wish come true, as we found out there were no tickets left for the two buses back to Petersburg that night! Tired out, freezing cold, and now miserable, we were considering all sorts of thoroughly unsavoury options (like wandering the streets for the night, with a bottle of vodka to keep warm or paying the seedy-looking guys that were hanging around the empty ticket kassa offering rides to Petersburg for 1000 roubles or $40 each) when thank goodness the driver of the last bus of the day had 3 no-shows: Deliverance!