Riga!

So I've made it to Riga, capital of Latvia, and have left Russia behind! The train journey was long, nearly 13 hours from Saint Petersburg altogether. After one of the most frantic scrambles of my life, I jumped on the train ten minutes before it left the impressive art nouveau Vitebsky train station in Petersburg and I was on my way out of Russia! For some reason not many people take the train from Petersburg to Riga in the middle of the winter so there were only two of us in the 6-person sleeping compartment. My travelling companion was a middle-aged man from Riga called Sergei who looked like an Orthodox priest with his dark formal-looking clothes, scraggly dark beard and quiet, gentle manners.

We sipped tea from our cool metal Soviet-era railway mugs (complete with engraving of the globe surmounted by the Kremlin, encircled by a cloud of orbiting Sputnik satellites and moonward-bound rockets!) and chatted a bit, or rather he chatted and I attempted a look of comprehension and confused the heck out of him when I tried to say anything much. So our talk died out pretty soon and I slept for most of the trip, besides a frightful awakening of incoming jackboots at 4:30 AM when the Russian border guards came on board as we reached the frontier! They were very thorough - the one guard in camo fatigues and ushanka checked all under and behind the radiators with his maglight while the mother of all border guards, an intimidating older women with dyed bright red hair and a long forest green greatcoat, made Sergei disassemble his luggage for her. I waited for my turn, starting to sweat a little and thinking about the two old coins (contraband!) hidden deep within my suitcase. They couldn't possibly detain me for those.. no, of course not.. Then she turned to me and asked something in Russian, which I totally misheard but thought must be something like "Do you have anything to declare?" I hesitated, unsure, then took a 50-50 chance and nervously blurted out, "err... nyet!" Immediately I sensed it was the wrong answer to whatever she had actually asked as Sergei gave a strange frown and the lady responded with a shocked and icy "Nyet??" I muttered and blustered, but she just turned and disappeared without anything further down the corridor of the train, probably for reinforcements to take me off - oh no! Now I was really sweating but thank goodness she never came back, and I realized after, didn't even glance at my luggage so I guess I said the right thing after all. It seems odd that they'd go to so much trouble to rifle through Sergei's things and search every nook and cranny and not even take a peak into my bulging duffel bag and backpack, but I'm not complaining!

Then the train rolled over the border and it suddenly sunk in as I listened to the next batch of border guards speaking in a distinctly different (but equally fiendishly incomprehensible language) and I thought wow, I've made it through alive and well - phew! Even though Latvia's probably just as totally foreign and strange as Russia, it somehow felt reassuring to be on EU territory!

I found my hostel in Riga after a little wandering aimlessly dragging my duffel bag (those little wheels on luggage aren't made for heavy, melting snow + cobblestones I've found - skids would be better here!) gaping at the unpronounceable street signs and trying not to look too flustered. Eventually I found it - ah! Another great thing about coming to such northern places in the dead of winter is that besides there not being anyone on the train, there's no one in the hostels either! I'd booked the cheapest 10-room dormitory hall as it was the cheapest and I figured it'd do for one night, but as it turned out there's only one other person there, so I ended up getting a giant room nearly to myself!

Riga's old town is very charming - all sorts of windy cobblestone streets and steep-roofed Hanseatic houses and beautiful brick cathedrals with really unique Batlic spires. Those charming roofs can be dangerous though! I was walking along one narrow road when I heard an ominous rumble and turned around just in time to see a huge pile of wet snow sliding off the roof three stories above right onto an unsuspecting father with a baby carriage! It was scary but both of them were ok, just shaken up!

It's amazing how much Russian you hear spoken here, I'd say almost half of what I hear on the street is not Latvian. Since 1941 when the Soviet Union annexed the tiny independent Baltic States, huge numbers of Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians were settled here and now form a very significant minority, about 30-40 percent Russian in Latvia. Of course the Baltic peoples feel their cut lure is under threat by this (and feel to some extent that these people are intruders, forced upon them unjustly) and so Latvian is still the only official languages and the rights of this Russian minority is a hugely controversial and continuing issue. Makes our little Quebec situation look like a cake-walk! There's a very good Museum of Occupation that goes over all this and all sorts of horrendous atrocities endured by the Latvians under the periods of Nazi and Soviet occupation - you can just feel the resentment and anger the people here have for all they suffered during those Soviet years.

Looks like that's all the time I have for - tomorrow, Frankfurt!

Peter in Petersburg no longer!

Hi everyone, just a super quick note to let you know that I have indeed left Russia and am finally in the EU! Tonight I will be staying in Riga, Latvia and tomorrow I fly further west to Frankfurt and then on by train to that land of chocolate, Tintin, and battlefields - Belgium! I'll be there for a good ten days so should have a chance to write more on my blog as I will be staying with friends who have internet, huzzah! Sorry it's been so long since my last post but things got busy and the internet pooped out at my flat, so I'll make amends now! Will post some photos from my Moscow trip soon. Bye for now, I have 1 minute left on my trusty Latvian computer so I must run!

The Blockade Cemetery

Just a quick note to let you know that I've finally got around to captioning the photo album Blockade Cemetery so you can finally know what you're looking at.

Yesterday I had the occassion to use my tallness for the public good. Helen, Ina, and I were walking back from class when a distraught-looking babushka came at us, or rather at me, calling "Molodoy chelovek, Pozhalsta pomogitye koshku!" Did I hear that right? I was sure she said young man, come help the cat... Perhaps my Russian's getting better because I'd understood correctly for once. There it was, a mangy black and white street cat stuck on the top of an old wroughtiron fence. The poor thing was mewling pathetically and staring with wide eyes in terror at distant ground and the knot of worried babushki below! So up I climbed and spent a good couple minutes in front of the assembled crowd trying in vain to pry the darn thing's claws off the fence - one off, two back on, one off, the other one back on. Argh! Much embarrasment later, I finally extricated the uncooperative fellow and passed him down to Ina. The babushki cheered, Molodets! Molodets! - a wonderful Russian expression that something's like good show, old boy! My proudest moment: Peter, rescuer of Russian feral kitties!

Kronstadt

So down to the last few weeks of my stay in Russia, already! As it is so far, I leave for Germany on the 27th. I think I'll be sad to leave this city, I wouldn't call it home but it's hard not to get attached to somewhere after living there for nearly half a year, especially such a fascinating and beautiful place. Then again, I doubt I'll stay sad for long since I am leaving it to travel through Europe for two months so I think I'll get over it! More on my travel plans soon.

Last weekend I went out to Kronstadt, an island town and major naval base 29km east of the Petersburg in the middle of the Gulf of Finland. Just a year after Peter the Great founded his new capital he built the fortified port at Kronstadt in 1704 to defend it against Swedish naval attack. The military threat posed by Sweden was soon extinguished with the crucial Russian victory at Poltava (endlessly commemorated in almost every Petrine palace, church, or fountain here!) but Kronstadt continued to grow and became one of Russia’s main naval bases.

My interest in naval history, especially Russian naval history, is pretty limited however. The real reason I wanted to see the place was because this was the site of the famous 1921 Kronstadt Mutiny, an event that had major implications for the then-fledgling Soviet Union. The sailors in the garrison out at Kronstadt had been some of the Bolsheviks’ most loyal supporters during the October Revolution and subsequent Civil War, so it came as quite a shock to Lenin and his comrades when these men (once called “the pride and glory of the Russian Revolution” by Trotsky) rose up in mutiny against them, declaring their independence and opposition to the Soviet government.

The Bolsheviks immediately realized the danger that the mutiny would spread and so moved quickly to crush it; 50,000 Red Guards were ordered across the thick winter ice on the Gulf of Finland and take the rebellious island fortress by storm. After several failed attempts and some desperate fighting, the base was taken and the mutineers wiped out. Although the rebellion had been successfully crushed, the Bolsheviks were still sufficiently shook up by the mutiny of some of their most trusted to realize that the hectic pace with which their policies to build Communism in Russia could not be maintained; such radical change and sacrifice could not be expected of a resentful population already hungry and poor after seven devastating years of war. Rather than risk another major rebellion, Lenin decided on a tactical retreat and scaled back the demands, allowing greater freedoms and even a degree of private business to return. So thanks to the Mutiny, the Soviet Union briefly enjoyed a time of comparative freedom and tolerance in the 1920s, known as the NEP (New Economic Policy) period. It’s a really culturally fascinating era for me, such a diverse flourishing of ideas about what this new socialist world should look like – lots of bizarre experimental art and wild ideas floating around, before the stifling repression of the Stalin period.

I hope you don’t mind the history lesson too, too much! I realize I tend to get carried away sometimes but I think it’s good to know a little of what went on at these places, it makes the experience of visiting them (or reading about visiting them!) so much more meaningful.

So on to the actual Kronstadt trip! It was quite the journey – first I took the Metro up to the far northwest suburbs of the city, and then another 30 minutes by marshrutka minibus. Unfortunately the man sitting right behind me ate a huge, garlicky shvarma (a gyro-donair type thing) just before getting on board and then did a lot of talking with his wife, who also ate a garlicky shvarma just before! One can’t take Russian transport without expecting some sort of adventure, even if it is a rather pungent adventure. I noticed with some worry that there was a fairly large hole in the windshield directly in front of the driver’s field of vision, with radiating cracks moving out towards the edges! Then I noticed that the hole had been repaired quite sufficiently - filled with yellowy glue, hmm - and since it seemed like an old repair and the driver had obviously been driving for some time without full front vision and didn’t seem to mind, I decided not to worry about it!

The drive was picturesque, or rather the part after we escaped from the suburbs, which in Russia are always depressing places with nothing to break the monotony of concrete slab living structures that line the road except for the odd stomatologia (dental/medical clinic I think), beauty salon, or 24-hour grocery. Riveting places. But onwards! The frozen Gulf of Finland looked incredible as we drove along the long causeway connecting Kronstadt to the mainland, like endless white fields. We passed by three small islands strewn with the ruined buildings of old fortresses, sunlight coming through the gun slits of squat turrets and machine gun nests. Although obviously derelict, the new glinting razor-wire fences that surrounded these crumbling installations reminded me that this was still military ground; in fact, it was only in 1996 that foreigners were even allowed to set foot anywhere on the restricted grounds of Kronstadt.

From here on, I’ll let my photos take over. Enjoy!