The Soul of Russia

      Music is everywhere in Russia

 On our cruise ship the Ms Rossio, we heard music and in hotels, in theaters, in palaces in the open air while we traveled through the rivers, canals and lakes of Russia. We covered 800 miles and sailed through the two largest lakes of Europe.  Our trip got off to a rocky start on Lake Ladoga.  The waves were very high.  We were on the upper deck near the Tsar Bar and we could see the waves washing past our window.

  St. Petersburg.

Upon arrival we were given a walking tour around the Ambassador Hotel and we purchased bottled water, chocolate and crackers. I was very thirsty, but too tired to go to dinner.

Our hotel was new and very beautiful. From our window we could see the golden dome of St. Isaacs Cathedral, an apartment building with a playground in the foreground. We slept well in the very comfortable room.

 After a great breakfast, we visited the Church of the Spilt Blood, but we did not go in.  Then we visited St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a marvelous space built on a swamp.  Amazing. The heavy bronze doors and the soaring interior columns of lapis lazuli and malachite caused us to look up at a golden dome with a dove.  The place is a museum, but a small side room is used for worship since 1998. There were many beautiful mosaics.  Under Communism, many churches were torn down until someone got smart and said, “Let’s keep these as museums of atheism.”  That saved many of them. Now some are used for worship.

     While cruising the Neva and Volga Rivers aboard the ship Ms Rossia from St. Petersburg to Moscow, I was given the opportunity to learn to play the balalaika.  I thought it would be easy. A young woman Victoria recruited a small group of us willing to learn.  The balalaika is a three stringed instrument that was brought to Russia from Mongolian Tatars in the 13^th Century and developed in Russia through the 15^th Century. It is plucked with the thumb or strummed with the index finger and to this day is popular in Russia.

 Barbara and Victoria my Mentor

     I love the sound of the instrument but I am a slow learner and did not feel prepared when we were told we would play in front of an audience—everyone aboard the cruise ship!  So I quickly handed my balalaika to someone who really wanted to play it.  Victoria said I should play the spoons with the group—easy enough— and so I did keep rhythm with spoons along with the balalaika ensemble.  Then she suggested I sing some Russian songs with a chorus, so I did.  I love Russian music. .  There is something about the music that is the soul of the Russian people.  We sang Dark Is The Night, My Heart and several other Russian songs that were translated into English for us to sing. The words to these songs are heartfelt and the melodies lovely.

     Victoria Zyablatseva, our lovely young mentor, played classical music on the three stringed domra for us.  The melon shaped instrument, older than the balalaika, was burned in Red Square by Ivan the Terrible, the unstable Tsar of Russia in the 1500’s.  He had the hands cut off of anyone who played it.  Good thing for Victoria it is not like that in Russia any more. Music in Russia is everywhere: on board our cruise vessel where a young lad accordion player entertained us on the way to the dining room, and we heard classical music played by an orchestra of children at their music school.  This was better than I had expected as a young girl played her own composition on the piano. It blew me away. Before we left the U.S. we were asked to bring toys for the children at the music school that was also an orphanage.   I had brought kazoos to give the kids and their teacher rolled her eyes when I presented them. If I had known how talented these young ones were, I would have brought something more appropriate.

On our way to dinner on the ship we were serenaded by an accordion player and young women dressed in their traditional Russian garb

     At Catherine’s Palace in Pushkin a trio of men serenaded us with Russian songs.  The acoustics were marvelous and Catherine’s Palace elegant.  Outdoors is a statue of the poet Pushkin whom the poetry loving Russians admire.

We visited

 the Catherine Palace in Pushkin, an hour out of town passing the monuments of war heroes and Lenin.  We’re told that some places toppled statues of Lenin, but not St. Peterburg.  Our guide Ivan says Lenin looks like he is hailing a cab.  He does. Catherine's Palace was put back together like a broken eggshell after being bombed in WW II.  There we were serenaded by a trio singing a Capella.  The acoustics were marvelous.

                                                                Pushkin

Our dinner is not included and so we ate next door at an Ajerbajen owned restaurant.  The owner is Moslem, and our waitress who looked like a China doll is from South Russia.  Russians are all sorts—like Americans.  When I walked down the street in St. Petersburg or Moscow the people were very fashionably dress and they could have looked like people in a large city of the U.S.

My friend Wanda and I really enjoyed this trip, the art, the scenery, the people, and especially the music.  On a crowded subway in Moscow, two young women offered us their seats.  The people we met were very kind.

     At our hotel we enjoyed a jazz trio in the lounge and then we went to the ballet Swan Lake with the beautiful music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Theater.  The ballet troupe and the music expressed the soul of Russia.  We enjoyed the elegant marble theater.

     In Uglich our ship was greeted by a brass band all dressed in their band uniforms.  This put us all in a happy mood.

I wish Putin were a better person.  We enjoyed the people of Russia but not the politics..

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