Remembering Russia…10 Years Later!

This is my year of meaningful anniversary decades:  1976--finished grad school and headed to Africa;  1986--first full year of marriage to Bill Lewis, a man I still love and honor, in spite of our present “divorced” status;  2006--began collaborative work with Haitian women and made an unforgettable trip to Russia and Ukraine with Bill and our sons Owen (15) and John (14). 

That unforgettable journey fulfilled a long-standing dream for Bill, who studied Russian and used it in military intelligence work--his first career.  His release from the related security designation (Top Secret) meant he/we could finally make the trip, and his selection as Faculty of the Year at Pueblo Community College (southern Colorado) provided some travel funds.

Bill receiving faculty award, 6 months prior to trip

Friend Sherrie Howey learned of our plans and asked us to carry/present cash awards to students in Ukraine on behalf of the Foundation for International Professional Exchange (FIPEWorld.org), an agency her family had co-founded with a Russian man a decade or so earlier.  In exchange, Sherrie helped with some of our expenses and arranged guides for us in Moscow and St Petersburg.   

With Sherrie Howey

Russian friends in Pueblo helped too!  Karine Garibova of the Veronika String Quartet, resident musicians at Colorado State University-Pueblo at the time, overlapped with us in Moscow and showed us some of the city.  The quartet’s violist Katya Dobrotvorskaia arranged for her mother to assist us when we visited Vladimir--one of the ancient cities of the Golden Ring northeast of Moscow.  

Sadly, our one camera--holding hundreds of photos--was stolen near the end of our two week journey.  “I don’t think I’ll ever get over the loss,” said Bill.  Fortunately, I kept a detailed journal of the trip, enabling me to share highlights here.  Photo credits: Vladimir:  Glimpses of the City (1995); calendar purchased in St Petersburg.   

The journey was much more than seeing historic places, where people have known deep suffering.  As visitors/strangers, we were offered the beautiful gift of friendship!  And in facing various traveler’s challenges, we as a family learned to depend on two essentials--our love for one another, and the determination to find ways forward together. I dedicate this four-part blogpost to Bill, in honor of Father’s Day. 

Karine Garibova

PART I:  MOSCOW and ST PETERSBURG

June 14:  On arrival at the airport, we quickly spot a short, dark-haired man holding a computer printed sign: “Bill Lewis.” After a brief exchange in Russian, we follow him to the parking lot, where he opens the car trunk for our bags.  We're all silent for awhile in the car, and then Bill asks if he's a friend of our contact person Galina, who arranged the transport. “No. Taxi" are his only words to us during the hour plus trip to the hotel.  

We soon see an advantage to his silent focus.  The highways are congested and he drives very aggressively!  It’s 2 pm; is this rush hour in Moscow? Galina tells us the next day that there are 10,000 new cars on the roads every year, and highways have not been improved for decades.  But what a place!  Stately ancient churches, ugly Soviet-style buildings, and flashy neon signs touting designer clothes, electronics, and casinos. I can’t wait to see it up close.

Our $300/night, 3-star hotel suite is clean and comfortable, with 50s era art deco furnishings.  Two sleek windows--the only modern features in the rooms--look out on tall ash trees and a bank of old toilets.  I wash the clothes we’ve been in for 48 hours, thankful for the advice to bring along a wide plug for the bathtub.  Owen helps me wring out the laundry and asks: “How did the women who washed our clothes in Haiti (during a 2003 service trip) get them so clean?”  I explain about washboards.

June 15:  Fortified by a decent night’s sleep and a breakfast buffet almost fit for royalty (there went some of our $300!), we’re headed toward the city center on the Moscow Metro...a shabby but apparently well-functioning system. The cars are packed.  People mostly sit quietly…reading, dozing, or looking around.  We no doubt stand out with our backpacks and Nikes, but we’re ready to walk!  John and Owen are dismayed that we look like tourists.  “It’s a legitimate role,” I say, “and Russians are most likely pleased we’re aiding their economy.”

We exit at a stop where we need to switch trains, and step into a grandly ornate hall with huge chandeliers and paintings on the ceilings.  We’ll be in about 8 different metro stations in Moscow, each unique--with statuary, mosaics--depicting themes of the communist state.  We get muddled by the many levels and signs, decide to leave the station and walk to our destination, but then realize it’s too far.  Bill gets directions from a hotel concierge and back we go...now finding the right train.  Over the next few days Bill ably navigates the system and the city.

The Tretyakov gallery: “world’s foremost collection of Russian art,” is spectacular. The boys are intrigued by the icons; I’m drawn to the light and color of the paintings of the impressionists and The Wanderers.  Our Pueblo friend Karine (visiting her family here) meets us at the gallery exit and takes us on a walking tour along the Kremlin wall, past the Moscow Conservatory, and to a small Georgian restaurant tucked away on a side street.  The food--eggplant, lamb kebobs, and borscht--is delicious.  We make plans to meet for dinner tonight at a new jazz club.  “An Armenian Aretha Franklin will be performing,” says Karine, “and they have great ethnic food.”  

June 16:  We’re standing--in awe, with thousands of other tourists--in the middle of Moscow’s Red (“beautiful”) Square.  Before us is the colorful, 9-domed St. Basil’s Cathedral, behind us the multi-spired, red brick State Historical Museum, to our left the impressive expanse of GUM (state department store), and to our right the walls of the Kremlin--imposed upon by the now heavily debated tomb of the embalmed Lenin, which many Russians feel is inappropriate for their capital’s beautiful city square.

The Kremlin

Inside the park-like Kremlin, we visit the magnificent, gold-domed, Archangel Cathedral (completed in 1508)--burial place of the tsars, every inch of wall and ceiling covered with colorful icons and other renditions of the Holy Family, saints, and events in the life of Christ.  Five singers lift their voices in celestial song that moves me to tears.  We buy a CD...a favorite for years to come.

Over late lunch at GUM we talk with our guide Galina about the realities of her life.  She’s positive and philosophical, but admits things are tough for 80% of Russians--3/4 of whom are quite poor.  A typical retirement pension is $100/month, and most jobs pay little more.  Immigrants from the former Soviet republics (where economic conditions are even worse) vie with Russians for jobs and are willing to work for less.  “Intellectuals--educated professionals are not appreciated or remunerated in Russia,” says Galina.

A fifth of the population has taken advantage of opportunities to make quick money on the backs of others--a huge area of profit being the sex trade.  I’d readThe Natashas just before the trip, and learned that tens of thousands of girls from Russia and the Balkans are being lured--with promises of work as nannies, etc., into essential slavery as prostitutes in Europe and elsewhere.  On the black market, these girls are the third most profitable regional “commodity,” after illegal weapons and drugs.

June 17:  We board the train to St Petersburg just after midnight and settle gratefully into our sleeping compartment...under fragrant pink sheets.  I awaken at 4 am to full daylight (it’s the season of the “white nights”), eager to see the north country.  I peer out the window at rivers and lakes, birch and pine forests, and quaint wooden houses...until sleep overtakes me.  At 8 am, a female voice gives the wakeup call at the door and soon the attendant brings us tea in glass cups nesting in silver holders designed with spaceships orbiting the earth.  No sooner has the train stopped than a young woman with short brown hair and glasses appears at the doorway: “Are you the Lewises?”

Katya, 26, has a PhD in Germanic and Romantic Languages and teaches at St Petersburg State University, earning about $100/month.  She, like many, works more than one job; she’ll earn $80/day as our guide and helper.  She takes us to the small apartment we’ll rent for $50/day from a friend of a friend of our friend Sherrie Howey.  Across a featureless courtyard, through a heavy iron door, up a dark, cement stairway lit by a single bare bulb, to the third floor we go.  

Katya knocks, and red-haired, smiling Olga opens a thick, heavily insulated door.  The two-room apartment exudes a shabby, old world charm--loose parquet floor, molded ceilings, antiquated wallpaper, china plates on the walls.  The narrow double bed, pull-out couch, and foam chair/bed will do for sleeping.  And hooray!--there’s a washing machine (it can boil clothes, I learn the hard way). Olga offers tea and fruit--the traditional Russian welcome--and then exits to stay with her grown daughter.  This is our cozy home for the next five days.

Mid-morning we commence a 10-mile tour, at race-walk pace, in unusual 90 degree weather with high humidity.  We move in a wave of humanity, in a fashion parade, with hundreds...maybe thousands of young women dressed in stylish sundresses or two-piece ensembles baring midriff and decolletage, many braving stiletto heels on cobblestone walkways.  The boys enjoy it immensely.

“Why can’t you dress more stylishly?  You have stylish clothes,”  says Owen.

"I'm more interested in comfort right now, sweetheart, and we have lots of walking ahead."

"We'll be strong for all this walking," John (whose preferred activity involves computers) had commented in Moscow.

Peter and Paul Fortress, St Petersburg

Tsar Peter the Great founded the city in 1703.  Renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924, it became St Petersburg again in 1991. The imperial capital of Russia until 1918, it's a city of majestic proportions, on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea.  We see the city center, walk along the waterfront, hear an open-air concert, and spend time at the museum/home of Dostoyevsky--who wrote of the “devil-possessed underbelly of St Petersburg.”  On the way home we visit a  farmer’s market and buy fresh salmon ($8/lb.) and the pickled vegetables we've come to love.

June 18:  It’s 3:30 am, and having slept a solid 3 hours, I need to catch up on this journal.  Sensing the great privilege of being here, I want to record and share the experience with others.  But first tea--brewed with loose leaf Ceylon, in Olga's beautiful blue and white teapot.  I toast some bread on the stovetop and top it with Havarti cheese and jam.    

Six hours later, following a 40-minute train ride, we’re walking through a small settlement of wood houses of various sizes, in various states of disrepair.  From the rich black dirt, flowers bloom and vegetables sprout on this glorious, blue-sky day.  Katya checks her map, and we turn off the paved road onto a dirt country road where we encounter the occasional car or bicycle.  After a mile or so, we cross a field of purple lupine, skirt a shaded cemetery, and approach a open rise ringed by tall pines.  Within the pines stands a Russian Orthodox Church--built of wood, painted white, with traditional dome and bell tower.  

Katya and I don heads scarves, and we all enter the sanctuary just in time for the 10 am service.  Paneled with lacquered pine, the walls are covered with icons.  The only seats are a few benches against a back wall, where older women--dressed in shabby skirts and sweaters, anklets and sturdy flat shoes--sit from time to time during the long service. The priest, wearing a stiff, white, brocade-like robe, stands in a corner near the front, hearing confessions and blessing the penitent by covering their heads with his stole and making the sign of the cross.  I recognize the portly Father Nicolai from Sherrie Howey’s photos, his long, curly blond hair--under a white headpiece--and beard now speckled with gray.

I’m struck by two things--the devotion of the ~ 60 worshippers and the sensual beauty of the whole experience...incense, candlelight illuminating the gold of the icons, sonorous intonations of the priest, voices of the choir, and reverent movement of congregants from icon to icon.  I also marvel at the ability of the worshippers to stand for 2 1/2 hours.  Bill whispers: “Here you get your salvation and your suffering at the same time.”