Novgorod
The one good thing that did come out of this week was a scheduled trip to Novgorod by our campus.
We set out at 8:00am on Saturday (Feb 28th) towards Novgorod (it was about a 4 hour drive). We arrived around noon.
It was a nice drive down, but we did have interesting hiccups. Outside of the city, Russia looks to me like the Russia I imagined of the early 20th Century. No brick houses that are cookie cut on a street, no, no, no… these houses look like the little wooden village towns that you see in movies. (except more elaborately coloured). I tried to take some photos of the towns to show you guys, but my window was disgustingly dirty due to the dirty slush and heavy snow, so I took a little video:
It’s hard to show in the video the detail of these houses. The wood is carved with interesting patterns on the side of the houses, and a lot of the time, there are a few burned/ completely dilapidated houses between the ‘good’ ones. I used the term ‘good’ loosely, because a lot of the ‘good’ ones had their houses half dilapidated too.
This is the best photo I got showing some of the house damage, mainly because the bus driver was actually going to fast for me to capture the houses I wanted too.
Anyway… as we drive along towards Novgorod, we notice the driver slow down and eventually pull over to the side of the road. After he gets out and disappears for a little bit, we noticed what caused us to pull over…
Yep! That’s our driver in the back of the police car! It seems (as we were told later) that our driver was doing 82 KM and hour when the limit was 80. As it seems, police here are either bored, or they take speeding very seriously.
After 10 minutes of the driver arguing with the police man, the woman who is our Russian coordinator went out and apparently talked our driver out of the trouble:
After a little more driving, we finally got to Novgorod and set off for our first excursion. The Yuriev Monastery.
A little background on this Monastery, It was founded in 1030. According to legend, the monastery was founded in the eleventh century by Yaroslav the Wise. The Cathedral/Church of St. George is one of the largest in Novgorod. It is a tall (105 feet tall) with three silver domes, which is somewhat unusual for Russian churches which usually have five (the main dome representing Christ, the four smaller ones representing the evangelists). Some remnants of the medieval frescoes remain, but most of the church was refrescoed in 1902.
The monastery was ravaged during the Soviet rule. Five of its six churches were destroyed by 1928; the monastery was closed in 1929. During the World War II, the buildings were occupied by the German and Spanish armed forces, and were seriously damaged. In 1991 the monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church, and parts of it have been renovated since then. However the western part, including a church there, are still in ruins.
With that said, here are some pictures:
This is the Cathedral/Church of St. George. Outside it’s huge, but doesn’t look to elaborate. Inside however, is absolutely stunning. I tried to take some pictures, but my camera did not want to work inside. So please bare with the following images:
After we left this Cathedral/Church we walked around the grounds a little, and I took a lot of pictures, but I won’t bore you with all of them, here are two:
After the Yuriev Monastery, we hoped back in our van and drove to the Museum of Wooden Architecture. It was amazing. Not many people fancied it, but I loved it for it’s old Russia feel.
The Museum of Wooden Architecture if found near the shore of Lake Ilmen. The museum represents a village street with houses, churches and household buildings placed in the outskirts of the village. Two churches of the 18th century – the church of the Transfiguration and the church of the Resurrection are the compositional center of the museum. Unfortunately the churches were closed to us, because they apparently don’t like opening them in the winter (Snow + Wood = Bad) but I did get some pictures of them (along with the rest of the ‘city street’)
But not everything was wooden! The bathrooms were actually made out of an old bunker which looks like it remained after the war:
The last stop of our Novgorod trip was to St. Sophia Cathedral within the Novgorod Kremlin. But before we ventured there, our coordinators managed to get us a wonderful and amazing dinner!
We dined inside the Kremlin wall at the Detinets restaurant!! If anyone should happen to be going to Russia, I would highly, highly recommend this stop. It feels like such an authentic medieval Russian experience. The restaurant is actually located in the cellar of one of the defensive towers of the Kremlin wall. The atmosphere is amazing. The lighting however is very dim (mainly just the candles at your table and a few candles from the hanging medieval chandeliers, so when I tried to get photos they didn’t turn out so well. However! Here is what I got:
This was the first course of a five course meal that we had. I had meant to take a photo of each course, but I was rather hungry, and once I started eating it was all downhill from there 
Here are the shots I grabbed of interior:
And here is a shot from the outside:
After the amazing meal, we walked towards the St. Sophia Cathedral. But before we got there we ran into the Bronze monument to the Millennium of Russia (built in 1862)
Here is an image of it from 1862:
And here is the monument in 2009:
During World War II, the Nazis dismantled the monument, and prepared it to be transported to Germany. However, the Red Army regained control of Novgorod and the monument was restored to public view in 1944. Here are some other shots of the monument:
Along the base of the monument were sculptures of people who shaped Russia. They had poets, writers, warriors and Tsars. Of course, my favorite side of the bottom sculptures were the Tsars. Here is the who’s who of Russia’s greatest Tsars:
I don’t really know why they stuck Nicholas I on there. Maybe it was because it was less than 10 years after his death, and they wanted to give him some commemoration, but in general, I wouldn’t personally say Nicholas I did anything to really help the Romanov reign.
After we finished with the monument, we headed over to view St. Sophia Cathedral. It is an eleventh-century cathedral and apparently is the centrepiece of Novgorod’s religious buildings. The 38-metre-high, five-domed, stone cathedral was built by Vladimir of Novgorod. Construction took place between 1045 and 1050 (making it the oldest church building in Russia proper and according to Wikipedia, it’s the oldest building of any kind still in use in the country). Unfortunately, there was no photography allowed inside the church, so here are some shots from outside:
After we finished the church, we left for the bus. I grabbed these shots on the way back to the bus:
We got home in good time, left around 6pm, and made it back around 9:30pm. When we got home one of my roommates, Natasha, realized there was new luggage in her room. We had a new roommate! She wasn’t home yet, so we all sat and ate and drank a little soviet champagne while we waited.
She arrived pretty late (around midnight) and said quick hellos. We all went to bed after that, and that concluded my weekend. The next day (Sunday) I just did homework and got to know this new roommate.