A few things I'd like to remember from Russia

Peter the Great was 6'7".
St. Petersburg enjoys only 30 sunny days each year. We visited during three of them.
It stays light past 10 p.m. in July.
The Romanovs married German women.
The Romanovs married many women.
Serfs were freed by Czar Alexander two years before the American Emancipation Proclamation freed American slaves.
Bloody Sunday resulted from a peaceful protest by religious peasants.
One million died in Leningrad during the 900-day siege by the Nazis.
Peter the Great, who traveled with an entourage of 13 women, slayed his wife's lover and put his head in the square.
Lake Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe.
Onegin is the second largest lake in Europe.
Stalin secretly built a reservoir to give hydroelectric power to Moscow in 1941.
Kremlin means "fortress."
Great birch forests cover the landscape.
A ruble is a little less than a nickel.
Icons are painted on wood; frescoes are of stone.
Lacquer boxes are made of paper mache.
Vodka is taken very cold with pickles. Russian vodka is made of wheat and corn; Polish vodka is made of potatoes.
Czarina Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, had expensive taste in palaces. She devoted her life to parties and to her own beauty.
Amber is a pine resin not a stone.
Rasputin washed up in a river two days after his murder by royal conspirators with the breath still in his lungs.

St. Petersburg

We landed in St. Petersburg on Thursday and for three days we toured castles and museums and ate in terrific restaurants. We began with Catherine's Palace, built for Elizabeth, and named for her mother, Catherine, Peter the Great's second wife. The castle is famous for its ballrooms. Later, we toured churches and more castles, in particular, Peterhof, the "Russian Versailles," famous for its fountains and gardens and views of Gulf of Finland. We visited a war memorial that commemorates the 900-day siege of Leningrad by the Nazis during which 1 million residents of the city died, most of starvation. We saw Swan Lake one evening. We spent most of a day at the incredible Hermitage museum with its spectacular collection of Impressionist paintings. We finished with a private party with Russian band in a palace once owned by Russia's wealthiest family.

St. Petersburg, population 5 million, with its canal system and many rivers has been compared to Venice and is one of the world's most beautiful cities.

Lake Ladoga

Europe's largest lake is our sailing "medium" for today. Later this afternoon, after our Russian class and a film about the czars, we'll reach the Valaam Archipelago where there is a monastery that was destroyed twice by the Swedes when it was located at the border with Sweden. It has been at its present location since the 14th c.

Yesterday we spent the entire day at a resort called Mandrogi. The distance between Mandrogi and Valaam is about 134 miles. There is a vodka museum at Mandrogi. We were all invited to taste four types of vodka -- I tasted two. The first type of vodka was cranberry, and it looked like syrup. I didn't like it. The second type was for colds -- honey and pepper vodka. Someone in our group bought a bottle called "Five Lakes" and served it to us at our cocktail hour on the ship. He had heard from Russians that this type of vodka was among the best.

Shopping in Mandrogi was a little more expensive than we had been accustomed to on the trip so far, but the craftsmen were there in the shops to show us their work and answer questions. Painted wooden dishes, lacquer boxes, linens and wools, bead and leather work -- these were some of the crafted items we saw being created firsthand.

We sail for St. Petersburg tonight and will reach the city by tomorrow morning.

Volga

We've been sailing since Thursday. This is Sunday morning. We've stopped for walking & bus tours in two towns. Mostly, we are visiting Russian orthodox churches and monasteries. Yesterday I asked our guide, Alexander, whether the Russian people were actually religious or were the churches mostly for posterity and tourism. He said that about ten per cent of the Russian population worships regularly, another twenty to forty per cent are atheists, and the rest are believers who do not keep up a religious practice.

Back on the ship, we had a Russian lesson, and our by now customary series of multi-course meals. The vodka called "Imperial" -- I'm told by the Serbian bartender -- is almost as good as Beluga at half the price. Russian cigarettes cost 8 or 10 rubles or about 40 cents per pack, but other things are expensive -- such as a cup of coffee at the luxury hotel in Moscow which costs about $12.

We are at sea in a reservoir built by Stalin in the early 1940s to supply hydroelectric power to Moscow. The great reservoir displaced 700 villages when it was built. It fills the natural river basin of many Russian rivers, including the Volga and the Sheksna. Also, we have passed through a string of locks that lift to the ship to higher elevations.

Moscow

The feeling was bittersweet when we left the city to board our ship in the canal. Most of us had not visited Moscow before, but we all felt the city was beautiful, full of museums and monuments, statues of political figures and great writers, and we wondered if we'd ever make it back to this amazing city. In the morning we visited a museum of 18th & 19th c. art and toured the city by bus followed by a fabulous lunch at the Pushkin restaurant. The restaurant seemed very old to us, but is actually only ten years old and has been artificially aged to seem like a relic. The city is teeming with restoration specialists. We then visited a convent where Russian royal daughters spent their lives since no suitable husbands could have been found for them and a cemetery where famous Russians are buried. Then we shopped a bit for amber and fabric before boarding our ship. Once on board, there was an orientation, reception, and gala dinner on the sundeck. This morning we'll hear a lecture about U.S.-Russian relations and later this afternoon,we'll tour the churches of the city, Uglich. I don't understand a word of Russian, or I should say, I only understand one word: nyet. The alphabet is so foreign as to block understanding and create lingusitic isolation. Fortunately, most people speak at least some English. I understand German, too, and our fellow travelers on the ship are a group from Switzerland.

Days One & Two

At JFK I met the Yale alumni representative, Nori, and we traveled together to Frankfurt, where I had not been since I was 18 -- had not been in Europe at all since then -- and where I ate Frankfurters at 5 a.m. local time. After our breakfast, we boarded the plane for Moscow. We arrived a few hours later to a sweltering heat. There was no air conditioning in the airport. Our local guide met our plane, rounded a few of us up, and directed us to a v an that took us to our hotel. The hotel -- Le Royal Meridien -- is situated across the street from the gate to Red Square. The views are spectacular, as are the rooms and the service. We met as a group last night -- many of us were jet lagged, but we did our best to keep up the conversation over dinner -- Chicken Kiev at an area restaurant. The women sauntering the street and in the undergrounds are fashion model-look alikes. They wear high heels and walk over cobblestones. It's no wonder Paris designers take inspiration from them. At dinner I met a woman poet from Colombia, a woman scientist from Turkey, and another woman whose brother-in-law is a well-known Russian actor. There are New Yorkers and Southerners, but almost everyone is a Yale graduate. For breakfast I ate herring, sturgeon, salmon, and trout. I felt I had not tasted these fish until then. The flavor is incredible. This morning we tour Red Square, the Kremlin, and State Armory Museum. Tomorrow we leave for another day trip before boarding our boat, the M.S. Volga Dream, to begin our week-long voyage on that river.

How to Reach Me

Waterways of Russia
July 21 to August 3, 2008

Yale Educational Travel
Association of Yale Alumni

Hotel National Le Meridien
July 22 to 24 (2 nights)
15/1, bld. 1 ul. Mokhovaya
125009 Moscow, Russian Federation
Phone: 011-7-495-258-7100
Fax: 011-7-495-258-7100

M.S. Volga Dream
July 24 to 31 (7 nights)
Phone/Fax: 011-7-906-750-2011
Email: info@volgadream.com

Please note: the ship may not receive incoming calls while cruising.

Kempinksi Hotel Moika 22
July 31 to August 3 (3 nights)
Address:
Moika River Embankment 22
191186 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
Phone: 011-7-812-335-9111
Fax: 011-7-812-335-9190

If you encounter difficulty reaching the ship or hotel or your party, please call Thomas P. Gohagan & Company at (800) 922-3088 for assistance.