Rollin On The River

Departing Moscow on the river substantiated my conviction that people are people no matter where you find them. The banks of the river were littered with people enjoying the cooling waters adjacent to their tall apartment complexes. Families swam, picnicked, camped, boated, fished and sunned. The further we traveled up the river towards Saint Petersburg the more the landscape looked like any river community in the United States or anywhere else; gone were the high-rises replaced by single family homes. Saturday morning our boat maneuvered the river dotted with fisherman all fishing in one man small inflated boats. The Mc-Mansions started to appear, not as prevalent as you might see tin the U. S. but the money of Russia has found its way to the shores of the river.

The days are growing longer and we are told that it won’t get dark in Saint Petersburg. Moscow is at the same latitude as Anchorage Alaska so Saint Petersburg must be at the same latitude at Fairbanks. In Moscow we had lunch at the Café Pushkin, rated by Zagat’s as one of the best restaurants in Europe , so I am searching the Internet, when I can, for a comparable experience in SP. We’ll have to eat dinner and make our way back to the ship, a thirty to forty minute Metro ride, and are taking comfort in the fact that it shouldn’t be dark on our journey back to the ship.

The food aboard ship has been great, local wine is served with dinner, and the servers are cute and gracious. Tonight I told the restaurant manager to either promote or give Olga a raise, a Linzie Lohan look-alike from Siberia.

Our first stop out of Moscow was in the small village of Uglich, whose largest employer is Tyco Corporation. Our guide was a 29 year old girl who learned her perfect English at Moscow University and teaches English at the local high school an works as a guide in the summer. We were entertained by a six man singing group that sang “boatman” bring Goosebumps as a result of the quality of their performance.

I had been of the opinion that religion had not been aloud in the Soviet Union, but some how four hundred year old well used churches have appeared all over Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union twenty years ago.