Category Archives: Suzdal

Small Town Traditions

April 29, 2019 shucka Leave a comment

Living in Russia’s capital, I am exposed to only a glimpse of Russian life and what this vast country has to offer. I am surrounded by a variety of museums, parks, restaurants, cafes, etc. Living in this giant metropolis allows me to explore the history and culture through the vast number of establishments available to me. However, it also limits my own idea of Russia and Russian culture because it is only based on what I see and experience in Moscow. Fortunately for me, I recently embarked on a weekend getaway to two smaller towns, Vladimir and Suzdal. These towns allowed me to enhance my knowledge of Russian life by providing me a different perspective on what life in Russia can look like for people who aren’t living in its capital. It was in these small towns that I appreciated the traditions of Russian culture and the importance of its history.

To begin our journey, we departed on a three-hour train ride from Moscow to Vladimir. Already on the train, I began to notice our descent away from the skyscrapers, cafés, metro, and overall bustling city life. The buildings quickly disappear and are replaced by trees, parks by fields, and apartment buildings by small houses.

It is around evening when we arrive in Vladimir. When I step off the train, I am engulfed by a drastically different atmosphere. The number of people in the station has diminished. Additionally the shops encircling the station are limited. Our hostel is a quick walk from the station. We walk down a dirt path where few cars drive past. Already, I can sense the slower pace of life this town has in comparison to Moscow. When we arrive at our hostel and settle in, I take off my shoes in order to put on my slippers, a Russian custom, and head upstairs to rest.

The next day, we embarked on our adventure to an even smaller town, Suzdal. Our one day there highlighted the importance of small towns and their history through its preservation and traditions. I would describe our time there as a nearly perfect one. To get there, we had to take a thirty minute bus ride from Vladimir. The ride there included amazing views of open fields. It is a very walkable town, with a beautiful river running through it. It is also filled with an assortment of historical buildings and museums. For this reason, Suzdal is a prime example of historical preservation. The town feels as if time has stopped here. From each direction, you can see a religious building, whether that be a church, cathedral, or monastery. This is illustrative of Suzdal’s rich history as the religious center of medieval Rus. For instance, by the 14^th century, it had over 50 churches. Preservation of this town’s history is revealed through its citizens. For example, you can take a horse carriage around the center, shoot a bow and arrow as the Russians once did, and purchase one of the hundreds of antiques available in the city square.

The traditions of this town truly makes it unique. For example, multiple vendors here sell медовуха, а Russian alcoholic drink made with honey. Another unique aspect of this town are its twin churches. Located throughout the town, twin churches are built side by side, a larger one for summer standing alongside a smaller one for winter. In addition, this town offers a domestic museum, which represents what typical huts looked like in Suzdal. In this house are traditional 17^th century furniture and decorations. Here you can see a traditional stove, the most important piece of the house in these huts because of the warmth it brought. It was also where the eldest member of the family slept. Likewise, the museum has icons on display in the corner where they are traditionally kept. Lastly, the bell tower and the ringing of the bells in the city represent the city’s religious traditions and are an important feature of Russian history and culture through the beautiful music they make.

Our day ended here with a walk back to the train station with the sun slowly setting. It was on this walk that I could truly appreciate the small traditions Suzdal preserves in order to illustrate its vast history. Suzdal allowed me to see a different side of Russian life outside its bustling capital. Likewise, it made me appreciate the laid-back notion all small towns seem to have. Suzdal, to me, captured the importance of historical preservation and natural beauty.

Amelia, Murom, Rus', Suzdal, Vladimir

Poem about Rus’–the messenger

Quote April 28, 2019 blairsmitha 1 Comment

I’ve been his messenger for some time now.

And brown letter in my hand, walking across the wet morning field,

I feel like I’m hanging from a golden chain.

Of course I read them,

just like I steal a moment to spread my body across the exotic carpet,

like I hide fruit under my clothes.

Someone told me to tell him, if every bone in his body is split in two

and tears well in both his eyes,

I wouldn’t even know to deliver letters to a damp and quivering slope that was once a man.

Of course I read them, just like when I am almost alone at night,

I stare into the fire and cry tears of gold.

Someone told me to tell him that he alone split the cosmos down the middle

and caused a deadly rain of stars

and does he even know? And does he feel sorry?

Can you chase smoke away? Have you ever tried?

Someone told me to tell him that he’s a mold-covered boulder

that should be hewed again and again and again,

that there’s a nation of men ready to kill him one hundred thousand times over.

I return at night. The moon hangs from a starry chain.

I feel like I’m a prairie fire

the moment before it explodes in a flood of light.

Claire, Rus', Suzdal, Vladimir

Living in a Place of Beauty

April 28, 2019 williamsc Leave a comment

I grew up in a place that I consider to be incredibly beautiful. America’s Pacific Northwest is a temperate rainforest between the Pacific and the Cascades filled with mountains, waterfalls, beaches, and old-growth trees, where the landscape remains green and growing all year long. When I travel (which has mostly been in the US), I am accustomed to measuring the beauty of a place by the grandeur of its natural features, comparing a new place to my home. For example, during my first year in Northfield, Minnesota, I was constantly aware of the aspects of the landscape of Minnesota that were different from what I was used to. To the annoyance of all my friends, I moaned and groaned constantly about the extreme weather, starkly delineated seasons, overall flatness, and absence of conifers.

The view from my front porch in Portland… look at all those lovely conifers!

View of Mount Hood and the Columbia river from the plane to Carleton this year

Last weekend our group traveled to Vladimir and Suzdal, our first exploration outside of Moscow. On the train and bus rides, I watched the landscape pass by, and made my usual quick judgement of the aesthetic beauty of this new place. It was very flat and (at this time of year) colorless. If you took away the ancient cities, this area would not look too different from the area around Northfield, which I complained about above. But looking back, my overwhelming impression of Vladimir and Suzdal is that they were incredibly beautiful. Here, I encountered a new type of beauty, one that I have not seen since the last time I was in Europe. Unlike in Oregon or Minnesota, the modern residents of these ancient cities live surrounded by the beauty of old, glorious, manmade architectural creations, a very different daily experience of beauty than mine, which is composed of monumental natural features.

Landscape near Vladimir… fewer mountains and conifers.

In Portland, the skyline is nice, I guess, but it can hardly compete with the snow capped peaks of Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens that rise above it. Any Oregonian would probably agree with me that buildings such as our beloved “Big Pink” in downtown can hardly compete with one of our natural wonders, such as Multnomah Falls or Neakhahnie Mountain. These buildings are mostly big rectangles of metal, glass, and concrete, built without reference to the natural world. The natural landscape surrounding Vladimir and Suzdal, however, is both integral to these cities and outshone by the ancient constructed wonders within them. For example, Suzdal’s original fortress was purposefully built in a bend in the river to take advantage of the natural moat, and Vladimir is situated atop a cliff overlooking a river, another natural defense. Suzdal’s bend in the river is just another bend in the river, until you take into account the fact that people maintained a fortress here for a thousand years.

Portland skyline: lots of big rectangles! Big Pink is on the right.

Compare Portland’s rectangles to this “Suzdal pair” of churches in Suzdal…

… or this beautiful view of the Svyato Bogolyubsky Monastery near Vladimir

Residents of Vladimir can take a bus and attend service at a the Svyato Bogolyubsky Monastery just a few yards away from the same staircase where Andrey Bogolyubsky was murdered in the 12th century. Compare this to the American West, where I am used to considering structures that manage to be 200 or more years old to be ancient ruins to be revered and preserved as historical museums. Now in Russia, I am getting used to everything being so old that I wasn’t surprised when our tour guide in Suzdal pointed to parts of a church that were built in the 18th or 19th centuries and declared them to be “modern.” Although many have been destroyed, Vladimir and Suzdal are still full of these colorful and intricate monasteries, cathedrals, and bell towers: throughout the centuries, buildings have been added in new styles and reconstructed when they were destroyed. Nevertheless, many are still being used for their original purpose. We visited, for example, the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in Bogolyubskovo, a UNESCO World Heritage sight. Here, original walls held beautiful modern icons, and alongside the tourists, worshippers were still practicing.

Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in Bogolyubskovo

The Cathedral of Saint Demetrius in Vladimir

I am glad to have spent time outside of Moscow in these cities of old Russia. I felt a great sense of awe at the beauty, age, and significance of their monuments, and I am happy to report that here on the other side of the planet, like at home, people get to experience truly unique and beautiful sights every day.