I left St Petersburg on the Friday, bound for Novgorod. It was a real change to leave such nice people and have to sit next to a cranky old woman who did crosswords and slept through the whole three hour journey, and then got in a nark with me because I wouldn't move fast enough to let her off the bus. The ride was uneventful, the countryside monotone. Lots of birch trees and lakes, with the occasional village full of wooden houses and rusting Lada's to break the boredom. One thing I didn't try and do, despite sitting on the front seat, was look at the road. To say the Russians drive badly is like saying there's a bit of water in the Atlantic Ocean. The M10 towards Moscow is a single carriageway road with a sandy hard shoulder. This doesn't stop people overtaking and I've seen it where there are three or four lines of traffice abreast, from chugging Russian trucks spewing diesel smoke across everywhere, to four by fours driven by gangsters. No-one waits, no-one gives way...
Novgorod was an oasis of calm after that. I booked into the swanky Hotel Volkhov, right behind the city hall and within easy walking distance of the kremlin and - hurrah! - beach. The town itself is small and compact and consists of a fantastic kremlin, with huge walls and crumbly, slanted towers, encompassing various buidlings from the 12 to 14 centuries. Most are decaying and need some good restoration work but the effect is stunning, especially when you're sat on the beach in the freezing cold and wondering how anyone ever attacked it successfully.
Shopping here was an experience, as gone are the supermarkets of familiar comfort, no more Tesco or Asda... This is shopping Russian style. Basically, everything is behind glass or behind a counter. So before you even get to look at what you want, you have to queue. Queue for ten minutes, have a nosy, realise you're at the meat counter, look sheepish, join another queue. Once you're at the front of the queue you have to stop other people pushing in, and then, point. Loudly if possible. Sometimes you get what you want, other times they play dumb and just pick up anything. Occasionally you get it right first time. Never again will I complain about Tesco being hard work. Well, I will, but you know what I mean. So, total cost for bread, cheese, biscuits, beer and water? About three quid. Total satisfaction? Almost 100%. Total time taken, two hours sixteen minutes...
Because the Russian calendar is different to the English one, they have Easter later than we do, so this year I got to celebrate Easter twice. This was marked in the hotel by the provision for breakfast of a boiled egg. Everyone else's eggs were coloured, mine wasn't. I know it's childish to complain about that, but I wanted a coloured boiled egg, like the ones in the display that looked like they'd been exposed to radiation. And no matter how hard I tried I could never get more than one cup of coffee out of them... Easter Sunday was marked by parades. One of old men and women, with the occasional grandchild helping them along. Lots of black caps and wrinkled faces marching along slowly in the rain. Two veterans holding a portrait of Stalin, other people with pictures of people I didn't recognise. Towards the rear, a group of youths sporting red armbands with a black hammer and sickle in a white circle. They could, I suppose, be remnants of the communist party faithful, and were being directed out of town by the two policemen keeping an eye on them.
The square itself was more lively, at least for half an hour. A small brass band played some stirring anthem in the rain and a series of speakers got up, spoke, got back down again. Prizes were given for various acheivements, then everyone followed the group of young cadets towards the cathedral and the square was empty again, just a few birch twigs left as a reminder of the celebration. Later in the day, drunken revellers appeared, some too pissed to stand. It's no wonder they get so drunk, as almost every male from the age of 16 upwards seems to be permanently attached to a can or bottle of beer. This can be seen from nine in the morning onwards...
Next stop: Tver. A long, long bus ride away...
No comments:
Post a Comment