Tuesday: The Flight Home

We left for the airport at 7:30 AM and got to the airport by 8:45 avoiding most of the traffic. First we went through the security: our bags were x-rayed, and we walked through the metal detector. Next we lined up to have our check in bags searched. Monica had warned me that they would pull everything out of the suitcase, and that we would have to put it all back in. These guys were really nice. Not only did they not pull anything out of the suitcase, but they also didn't pull any of my well-taped packages apart. Phew!! I was happy to not need any of the tape I was carrying.

The next stop was the Delta check-in counter. They guy at the counter took our passports. Then he looked at everything, worked on his computer, worked some more at his computer. Next two other people came over to help him. They were speaking Russian, so I had no idea what the problem was. It wasn't encouraging though. I was remembering my brother and sister's canceled trip to Turkey last fall because they were missing a paper in their passports. Finally the printer started working and about 9 luggage tags came out. We both laughed, and he attached the tags to my luggage probably without checking the weight. I'm reasonably sure that my duffel bag was well over the 50 pound limit. He also forgot to give me the tags for my carry-on luggage which was again pushing the limits: a back pack each, a purse for me and a book bag for Kristen, and a gift bag for each of us. Apparently gift bags don't count as carry ons.

After the check-in counter, we navigated the passport control. We hadn't lost the registration papers in our passports, and we still looked like our passport pictures, so the lady stamped our passports, and we walked out into the airport. Turns out the guy had also forgotten to tell us which gate we left from, and there are no monitors giving an overview. I had overheard the person next to me saying something about gate 21, the one furthest away, so we walked to gate 21, checking the others as we went. It was the right gate. Once at the gate we had to wait until they opened the doors. In the interim I had an interesting conversation with the people behind me. They spoke a few words of German, but no English, but I managed to find out that they were going to Richmond to visit their daughter and their 3 month old grandchild. I told them the 5 Russian words I had learned; they told me the approximately 5 English words they knew, and we all laughed.

Next we went though more luggage inspections. Our bags were once again X-rayed, and we walked through the metal detector again and then were frisked. Next we took our bags over to tables where inspectors were waiting to manually check our carry ons. Finally we boarded our plane, and it took off reasonably on time. It was quite a thorough search overall.

The rest of the trip home was unremarkable. All the flights left on time. No one complained about the extra carry ons. My books were all in the check in luggage, so the backpacks weren't horrendously heavy. And, unlike Stephen, we didn't buy any illegal knives, well any knives at all, so no one opened our luggage. We picked it up, carried it about 20 feet at the New York airport through customs inspection (no joke with such a heavy duffel bag) and then went through security again and waited for our plane to Detroit. Monica had told me that this was a small plane and that they would likely take away some of our hand luggage, but the plane was less than half full, so no one complained about the extra stuff we had.

The bottom line is that I'm very happy to report this very boring post to say that not only did everything go well, but the areas where we were supposed to have problems didn't materialize. Most of all, we had a fabulous trip, but it's really nice to be home again.

Monday: A Nice Lunch, Novodevichy Cemetery, School, Boatride and Packing

We started packing in the morning, wrapping the dishes and getting everything organized. Then we left around noon to have lunch at an art gallery.

The main room in the middle had paintings all around the wall.

The room where we ate was off to the side, one of two small vaulted rooms decorated with frescoes telling a story. We think our room was of the Aeneid: The Trojan horse was a giveaway. It could also have been of the Iliad or Odyssey, but the Iliad didn't actually include the Trojan horse story, and the rest of the scenes didn't fit with the Odyssey and they did fit with the Aeneid.

The next room had a castle scene.

After we left the restaurant we drove past Novodevichy Cemetery and decided to stop in. We didn't realize that this is probably the most famous cemetery if you exclude the mausoleum in Red Square. Many famous people are buried here including Chekhov, Eisenstein, Gogol, Khrushchev, Kropotkin, Mayakovsky, Prokofiev, Stanislavsky and Shostakovich.It was not at all what we

expected, much more like a park than a cemetery. The
tombstones were carved to represent who the person was. Musicians had notes floating across their stones; a sculptor's tomb might have some
of his work included on his grave. Apparently Khrushchev's tomb was made by a sculptor he had denounced.

We didn't find the tomb of Stalin's wife, but we did find Gorbachev's wife's grave.

The memorial for Boris Yeltsin was hard to miss because it blocked part of the sidewalk.

The University of Moscow is the only one of Seven Sisters that is visible from the apartment we were staying at. This is the ski lift that runs by the university.

Next we stopped by the girls' school to look at the Bible projects for the 9th grade class. While Murray and Monica met with some teachers, the girls and I went back to get jackets.

Then we took a boat ride from just past the University around the center of Moscow to close to the old apartment.

Gorky Park extended for about a mile along the edge of the river.

I

t was nice to have one last view of Christ the Savior Cathedral

and the Kremlin.

Walking back to the metro, we stopped at the playgrounds for Jessi and Chrissie to renew old memories. Once back at the apartment, Monica worked on getting my stuff packed while I helped Jessi with homework, and Kristen helped Chrissie. I wasn't sure that it would be so easy to organize, but Monica is very gifted at packing. Not only did she have it organized properly, but she gave me very detailed instructions about how to handle the various obstacles I was likely to meet along the way such as what to do when the baggage inspectors opened everything and left it strewn all over the place and what to do when the people in New York tried to take away by fragile items because we were moving to a very small plane. I had much more fun helping Jessi with math and designing an exercise program.

Sunday: Sergiev Posad: Lavra Monastery and Cave Monastery

After a delicious Russian breakfast of blinis and other things, Murray and I walked around Sergiev Posad for about an hour before we were summoned back because Sveta was ready to start the tour.


The first few pictures are of Sveta's house. This is a view from the side.
This is from the outside of the gate looking in at the river and the barbeque. The house is on the left. At the back of the yard is a cliff providing almost complete privacy. These are the new stairs connected to the foundation of the old stairs which remained after the house burned down.

We first toured the Trinity Lavra, (another link and another) one of the most important monasteries in Russia. This monastery is where Peter the Great fled when his sister was trying to take over the throne. And since he built his first ship only about 60 km from here, he frequently stopped by. It was also the Patriarch's residence after the Patriarch was reestablished in 1946 after World War II Donalev Monastery in Moscow was reopened in 1983. Even though the monastery opened in 1946, only old people were allowed to attend. After the revolution in 1917, Christmas was banned; only in the last 10 years have people learned about it and begun to celebrate it. For 70 years, 3 generations, religion was forbidden. Russians were told to believe in Lenin as their savior.


Trinity Lavra was founded in 1347 by Sergius of Radonezh. Initially he built a small wooden hut, but eventually a community grew up and as time went by the small wooden hut slowly transformed into the most important monastery in Russia. People initially stopped there because it was on the main road, exactly 60 kilometers from Russia, the distance a horse could travel in one day. Sergius helped the people and gave them good advice; soon he because known as a miracle worker, and even more people flocked to visit. In 1407 the Tartars, cruel invaders from Mongolia known in the middle ages as the Golden Horde (think Genghis Khan), burned the wooden buildings. The Russians were under the Tartar yoke for 240 years until liberation came in 1480. The beginning of the liberation came a hundred years earlier with the Battle of Kulikovo, said to be successful because Sergius himself had blessed the troops. In 1422 Sergius was canonized and work began on the first stone cathedral, the Trinity Cathedral, on the exact spot where St. Sergius' small wooden hut had stood. Famous icon painters, Andrei Rublev and Daniil Chyorny, painted the very impressive frescoes. Rublev also painted the Holy Trinity Icon which was removed during the communist era and replaced by an exact replica in the 1990s. The original is in the Tretyakov Art Gallery. In 1450 a fortified wall was built around the complex to protect citizens from the Golden Horde. (One online source states that the wall was necessary because the monastery had grown very wealthy and needed the wall to protect its own assets.) The Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery was especially important in the Time of Troubles between the two dynasties when Poland was taking advantage of the political weakness and trying to enlarge its eastern borders. The people survived a 16 month siege in the fortress. In 1744 this monastery, by now significantly expanded, moved to the highest rank of lavra, which apparently means most important church. There are only two lavra monasteries all of Russia, this one, the largest, in Sergiev Posad and the other in St. Petersburg. (The other two are in Ukraine.)



The largest church is the Assumption church with a gold dome in the middle and 4 blue with gold star domes around that. It was built in 1585 to commemorate Ivan the Terrible's defeat of the Mongols. Worshipers queue up all day outside Trinity Cathedral winding their way all the way inside and around the building to the front corner to receive a blessing by kissing 5 tons of ornately wrought silver holding Sergius' relics. This church is open from early in the morning until late at night. It contains the oldest iconostasis in Russia as well as the copy of the Holy Trinity Icon. Before the revolution, this monastery was a very popular burial place where people paid large sums of money for the privilege. The Soviets dug up the grounds and desecrated many of the tombs. Now only a few grave markers are present. Boris Godunov, tzar from 1598 to 1605 and the only tzar not from either of the two dynasties) is buried with his family in the northwestern corner of this church.
The patriarchs are buried in the wall of the church. The St. Sergius Monastery is home to a large school which is prestigious because it is difficult to get into and because those who graduate get important jobs. When we finished the tour, we went into the gift shop to look around. Kristen asked the price of a silver ring which said "Save and keep" on it, but the babushka in charge told us that they only sold to Christians, so we weren't allowed to buy it. Sveta offered to buy it for us, so we gave her the money and Kristen showed her which ring she wanted. The saleslady realized that the ring was going to Kristen and gave Sveta a hard time, but Sveta came out with a similar ring in a few minutes: the sales lady had made Sveta try the ring on to make sure it fit. Monica had a similar story from Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. She and Stephen were walking through when a nun came up to her and asked if Monica was a Christian. Monica replied that she was at which the nun asked where her cross was and then sent her to the nearest gift shop to buy one. Stephen waited until the nun left to accuse Monica of being a heathen. They still joke about it.

In the middle was a chapel over a sacred spring where we drank the water which is supposed to contain silver. Jessi brought a bottle of this holy water back to Moscow.



One of my favorite parts of the monasteries and cathedrals is the bells. This monastery claims to have the largest working bell in its bell tower, the tallest structure in Sergiev Posed. Originally it had 46 bells, but most were thrown down and destroyed by the Soviets. Now it has 23 bells. The original large bell destroyed by the communists was only 65 tons, but it was replaced last year by a 72 ton bell built in St. Petersburg which our guide claimed was the largest working bell in Russia. (The largest bell weighs about 200 tons, but doesn't count as a working bell because of the large chunk which broke off when some brainy person doused it with water while it was smoldering in a Kremlin fire about 300 years ago.) The gate was not large enough to get the new bell inside the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, and the walls had to be taken apart. From Sveta's house we could hear them whenever they were rung. (shorter video) In Russia, the bells are played by moving the clapper underneath the bell rather than the bell itself. A complicated system of ropes allow the smaller bells to be played by hand, and the larger, by feet. Generally they are tuned so that there is a seventh between tones in a single bell allowing for complex sequence of sounds. (Interesting bell pictures on this page. I won't even pretend to know what else is on this page although I did find the word for 'April' somewhere in there.) The bells at the monastery were destroyed by the order of Stalin; bell ringing in the Soviet Union was banned for several generations. After the fall of Communism, churches were rebuilt and bells began to ring again. I found this interesting article about rebuilding the bells.




One of the monks. He had just put his cell phone away. It was an odd juxtaposition of the past and the present.
















I bought several icons including "St. George and the Dragon" at this small building which was just outside the gates of the monastery.












The next place we visited was about 3 kilometers away at the cave monastery which was totally destroyed by the Soviets except for the underground part which was used to store vegetables. It was given back in 1988. In 1851 Philip became a monk when his wife died and his kids had grown up. The Lavra monastery blessed him to start this work in the 1850s, and it was completed in the 1880s.



Note that the bells here have not yet been replaced.













Underground was a series of underground cells for hermits to live in. Each was very small with only a small stone table. There was no heat other than body heat and heat from a candle. Some of them had doors so that the hermits could come to the main underground cathedral. Others only had windows for food. When they died, the cells were sealed shut. We heard some of the stories about the miracles especially of the Chernagov theotokos icon and of another famous monk, Elder Varnaya who prophesied the future for Nicolas II in 1905. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to find links for this second monastery but can't find anything. I would be interested in reading what the monks thought about while they were holed up underground.




This is the main altar, a part normally viewed only by priests.








This icon had been target practice for Communist soldiers.