Russia/Mongolia/China Trip Day 5: Suzdal

So this post is REALLY long because I took lots of notes on our walking tour. Feel free to skim/skip parts/do as you please.

This morning we woke up on the train and got our stuff packed so that we were ready to go when we reached our stop seeing as we needed to get all our stuff of the train in the time it waited at the station. We all made it off with no problem and, as far as we know, without forgetting anything. We then took a minibus to the town of Suzdal where we checked into our hotel and had a short 2 hour nap before waking up for breakfast. On our way to Suzdal we learned that every summer for a few weeks the gas is shut down for maintenance and we happened to be here during that time. So, no gas in town and no hot water... Anyways, such is life! Breakfast was cooked for us in the home of a Suzdalian woman named Heleina (Helen). She made us pancakes (more like blintzes), “Russian hot pockets” (bread baked around a filling of eggs and green onions, and we had cheese, bread, fresh butter, homemade jam, and ham. It was a really nice meal and we decided to come back to her house for dinner as well.

After breakfast we met up with our guide Irina who took us on a walking tour of Suzdal. Suzdal was founded in the 9^th century and means “fertile soil” in Russian. Because it is pretty far from the railroad (about 30km), it is fairly remote and therefore hard to get to. This is why much of the city is so well preserved and survived the various Russian wars and Revolutions. The town of 11,000 people has 5 monasteries, 33 churches, and 14 bell towers in an area of 9 square kilometers. We started at the Market Square which was the centerpiece of the city. Churches were often built in the centre of town because the rich merchants who frequented the marketplace would pay for churches to be built. Churches were always built in pairs; a large summer church and a smaller winter church that would be easier to heat, and therefore warmer, in the winter.

From the market square we walked to the Kremlin, or fortress. In Russia, fortresses were open to any social class, unlike those in Western Europe which only housed noble or upper classes. The fortress included ramparts with wooden walls and was surrounded by a moat but only the ramparts remain of the Suzdal Kremlin. Inside the fortress was the town cathedral, a white stone church with blue domes and golden stars on the domes.

This church was built in the 13^th century when Russia was called Vladimir Suzdalian Russ. Being the main cathedral of the town, it was here at the warriors were blessed before battle, princes were crowned, and bishops and royalty were buried. Because it was a powerful town, the Bishop Ilyarioll wanted to use the cathedral to assert that power and dominance. So, whereas most of the buildings in the area were built of wood, he had the cathedral built of stone. However, because the Russian architects didn’t know how to use stone, he brought in European architects to design the building. This happened shortly before the Mongolian Tartar invasion and after the invasion there was period in Russian history where for 300 years Russia was in ruin and everything (including construction) essentially stopped making this the last church to be built prior to the Mongolia invasion.

We learned several things about symbolism in Russian churches. First of all, the colour of the domes symbolizes who or what the church is in honor of. Blue: The Virgin Mary; Gold: Jesus; Green and gold: Jesus and his apostles; Black: Resurrection. Additionally, we learned that Russians used to use letters to symbolize numbers on the clocks in the monasteries and churches. However, while A symbolized 1, the letter B was not used. This may have been for one of two reasons. The first is that the word for a bad man begins with a B and therefore they didn’t want to use letters that symbolized bad men when doing construction. The second reason is that the word for God starts with a B. Since the 3^rd Commandment (that’s right, I know my commandments) says not to take the Lord’s name in vain, they didn’t want to use the letter B.

The next place in the Kremlin we went was the cross-chamber, the room in which the Bishop would welcome guests, hold meetings, etc. This cross-chamber was unique in its construction; despite it being a large vast room of 338 square meters, it was built without any columns. Instead the support for the building came from extremely thick walls. This room was built during the reign of Peter the Great and it was one of the first places in Russia to feature chairs rather than benches.

In two of the corners of the cross-chamber were large tile ovens. Each oven was made of 150 ceramic tiles and because of how difficult it is to make these tiles they were extremely expensive to build. They are called Dutch Ovens or Dutch Stoves because of the similarity of the tiles to Dutch tiles/ceramics and the tiles each showed a different picture, either of daily life or of historical events and legends.

On the back wall of the cross-chamber was an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Spain. There is a unique legend to this icon: there was an icon of the Virgin Mary in church in Spain that was known to have worked miracles. Because of this, people would flock to the church to pray to the icon. One such person was a poor beggar who prayed to the Virgin Mary for money so as to feed his family. When he opened his eyes he saw that the Virgin Mary’s silver shoe had become a real shoe and she was giving him the shoe so he could sell it for food money. The beggar took the shoe to the marketplace but everyone assumed he had stolen it and he was therefore arrested and sentenced to death (apparently theft was a capital punishment, harsh!). He was allowed to pray to the Virgin Mary one more time before he was executed and as he was praying, in front of the judge and his executioners, the Virgin Mary’s other shoe turned to real silver and was presented to him. They finally believed the beggars story and he was allowed to live. Now, any icon known as the Virgin Mary of Spain (there are about 500 in Russia) includes a picture of the beggar and the Virgin Mary’s shoes.

Before we left the Kremlin we learned that all the medieval Russian cities had the same layout. The Kremlin fortress was in the center of the town. Once the Kremlin got too full, the townspeople who move outside the walls into a settlement (where the Market Square would be), and surrounding the Kremlin and settlement would be a ring of monasteries. This construction has survived in Suzdal.

As we walked from the Kremlin to the Museum of Wooden Architecture we passed by the Church of St Nicholas, a beautiful 18^th century wooden church that was moved to the Kremlin. This church has been used in several movies including some about Peter the Great. In fact, Suzdal is known as the Russian Hollywood because over 50 films have been made in Suzdal.

We then crossed over the Kamenka River (Stony River) that surround the town on three sides. The town was built in the horseshoe part of the river so as to be protected on three sides by the river. To complete the protection of the town, a moat was built (using the river water) to surround the town on all four sides.

We then arrived at the Museum of Wooden Architecture where we learned both about wooden architecture as well as what daily life was like in the older Russian villages. The wooden buildings were always made of coniferous trees because they are particularly resinous, a characteristic that keeps them from rotting. Because metal was quite expensive, they didn’t use any nails and instead would construct them Lincoln log style, using flax (or linen) as a caulk in between the logs.

We then went into a small house from the second half of the 19^th century. This house was laid out in the same way that all Russian houses were at this time. Going into the house there was a “store room” to the left, a corridor in the middle, and the “stove room” to the right. Starting in the stove room, directly to the left of the door would be the stove. The stove served many purposes. Obviously it was used for cooking and heating but it was also used for drying clothing and linen and was even used as a bed for the most respected members of the family: the grandparents. Obviously they slept on top of it, not inside... The far right hand corner of the room was known as the Red Corner. In Russian, red is not only a colour, it is also the word for beautiful and sacred. This Red Corner was the corner in which the icons were placed that blessed the house. The richer the family, the more icons they would have. Tradition dictated that newlyweds would sit until the icons and drink mead for a period of 30 days in order to bless their wedding and future children. This is where the concept of a honeymoon comes from. The benches that surrounded the dining table would also serve as the beds on which the children and the wife slept whereas the husband would sleep in the bed in the other right-hand corner of the room. Additionally, there was a bunk connected to the ceiling that the children would also use. The store room was used for just that: storage. That could include grain, flour, or a dowry. In order for women to be allowed to marry they would need to make their own dowry that needed to stack from floor to ceiling.

There were several interesting traditions that revolved around building houses. The first is that in order to pick the location of a house a cow would be brought to a prospective location. If the cow lay down, the place was considered lucky. If the cow walked away, the place was unlucky and a new location would be chosen. Additionally, Tuesday and Thursday were considered lucky days to start constructing the house. Once the house was finished, rather than enter the house themselves, the man and woman of the house would send a cat inside. If the cat immediately went to the stove, it was unlucky because it meant the house would be cold and work would need to be done to keep it warm. If the cat went to the Red Corner it was considered lucky. So, many Russians would make their own luck and place pieces of fish in the Red Corner so as to entice the cat in that direction.

Outside the house was a Threading Well (or stepping well) for getting water from very deep below the ground. Essentially a giant hamster wheel, two men would get inside and start walking, turning the wheel and pumping the water up. Because it was very difficult to work the wheel the whole town would come together on certain days of the year to help each other get water. This also served as a time when men and women could meet socially and courtship occurred during these meetings.

Also included on the museum grounds were wooden windmills. When learning about the windmills we were told that when constructing the cities they were often constructed on three different elevations. The highest elevation symbolized heaven, which belongs to God. Therefore the churches and monasteries were built on the highest ground. The second level symbolized the earth, which belongs to men. This is where people would build their houses. The lowest level symbolized hell, which belongs to evil. It is here that they would put their windmills, granaries, and silos so that nobody had to live there. However, because this was the area of the devil, the windmills would often have roosters on the top because it was believed that roosters could ward away the evil spirits.

In order to know if the windmill was operating that day, people would look out from their houses and see the orientation of the blades. If the blade made an “x” shape, the windmill was closed, but if they made a “+” shape then it meant the windmill was open.

After the Museum of Wooden Architecture we went to one of the monasteries surrounding the town. Originally called the Transfiguration Monastery, it was built by a bishop name Ephimious who was then canonized and the monastery was then renamed after him. It was founded in the 14^th century and used to protect the town from the North. The monastery was known for its honey wine, or mead, that was said to have had healing and restorative powers. When Ephimious was canonized in the 16^th century it attracted the attention of lots of religious noblemen who donated money to the monastery making it one of the richest in Russia. During the reign of Catherine II a prison was established in the monastery for “Old Believers” who refused to accept the new church doctrine that came out of the schism in the Russian Orthodox church. One such Old Believer who was imprisoned in the monastery was Monk Able who had a gift of predicting the future. He predicted to Peter the Great that Napoleon would burn Moscow and he predicted to Alexander I that there would be an uprising during his reign. The prison was closed in the 19^th century but the buildings were used for a German POW camp during World War II before it became a museum in the 1960s.

Before we entered the main cathedral we heard a performance of the bell-ringer. He would ring several bells at once, using both his hands (which held strings connected to many bells) as well as his feet to ring the largest bell. Once inside the cathedral we heard another small performance of 5 monks singing a liturgical hymn. The acoustics were absolutely incredible inside the cathedral.

The main cathedral of the monastery was covered in frescos painted the most famous fresco painter of the 17^th century, Guri Nikitsyan. This church was his last work and is unique because it doesn’t include a painting of the Final Judgment. In order to remind parishioners that the Final Judgment was coming (and essentially scare them straight), churches would have a fresco of the Final Judgment on their western wall. However, because he was painting during the time of the schism in the Russian church, Nikitsyan understood that Russians were scared and many of them believed that the schism itself was part of the Final Judgement. So rather than frighten them further he chose to paint things that would inspire people to be good and righteous. He therefore painted 4 layers of frescos: the top 2 layers had the works and miracles of Jesus from the gospel, the next layer had the Passion of Christ, the bottom layer had the works of Jesus’s disciples.

Finally, we walked from the monastery to where there was a pretty view of the Intercession Convent. Founded in the 14^th century it because famous in the 16^th century because rich women from St Petersburg were exiled to become nuns there. If a man chose to divorce his wife she could either live in shame or she could become a nun. Many women from St Petersburg became nuns and came to this convent. One such woman was the wife of a Prince who was divorced because she couldn’t get pregnant. However once we got to the convent she realized she was in fact pregnant. She feared for her son’s life, thinking that the prince’s second wife would want him killed, so she gave him to local couple to raise him and she pretended that the child had died. This child, George, grew up to famously steal from the rich and give the money to the poor; a Russian Robin Hood.

It was here that our tour ended so we went to sit in a coffee shop to rest a bit. I tried a classic Russian dessert called Birds Milk which was a sort of cake with a vanilla spongey base and a creamy custardy top. Hard to explain but pretty good.

Afterwards we went back to the hotel and the cadets and I went for a run. We covered much of the same areas in which we had walked that day and when the cadets were done running I continued on another little lap of the town on my own, seeing some places we had yet to cover.

Before dinner we walked to the Church of the Ensemble of Basil’s Monastery, a small active church with a bell tower. This church has 3 monks and 1 nun and it was on this site that in 988 all the Suzdalians were batpized (either by choice or by force) when Vladimir decided to make Christianity the national religion. When he was baptized, Vladimir was given a new name: Basil, which is why many Russian churches and monasteries take the same of St Basil. Several of us lit candles in memory of someone and we learned that if you want to light one in blessing of someone who is alive, you put the candle in the round candle holders. If you want to bless the spirit or memory of someone who has passed away, you put the candle in a square holder. We also learned that when there was a large crime and mafia problem in Russia in the early 1990s the mafia members would often light a “death” candle in the name of their enemies hoping it would bring them bad luck and death. We then climbed to the top of the belltower, admiring the beautiful view of the golden onion dome and the Suzdalian countryside.

We then had dinner again at Helenia’s house. Included in dinner was the traditional 3 shots of vodka, more specifically her homemade honey and horseradish vodka. The first shot is taken before the meal begins and it is a toast to making friends. The next toast, after the first course, was to everyone’s health. The final shot, which came before the main course, was taken with the left hand and was a toast to love. The first course of the meal was a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, white cabbage, a little bit of dill and a dressing of olive oil and vinaigrette. The second course was a chicken soup with celery and potatoes, and the final course was pork with peppers, mashed potatoes, and a tomato based sauce. We finished the meal off with tea, ending a lovely day in Suzdal!