Velikiy Novgorod

Velikiy Novgorod is known as "The Great Novgorod" and is credited with being the city where Russia originated. It's a small-ish town with a 'earth wall' running across one side of it and a river flowing through it. It's a very historical city and is beautifully maintained for tourism.

When we arrived, it was already 9pm, but still quite bright out. We hadn't made any reservations and started wandering around the city looking for hostels. Unfortunately, all the ones we went to were filled or extremely expensive. We wandered around a bit more and saw two other people also carrying backpacks, looking as lost as we were.

It turns out that they were in search of a hostel as well. Fiona (from Australia) and Masa (from Japan) had arrived on the same train as us and had intended to stay a night and look around the next day before returning to St. Petersburg. Fortunately, some SMSes later, our contact in Velikiy Novgorod, Ulyana, discovered us (we weren't sure where we were) and took us to a hostel where she had in fact already booked a room for us!

After some negotiations and confusion over pricing owing to the fact that none of us spoke both Russian and English well, we managed to get space for 5 people even though the reservation was only for 3. Thus we all settled down around the coffee table and pulled out our assorted food for a impromptu dinner. We had bread, assorted canned fish, tomato sauce, hard-boiled eggs, and coffee. Masa began pulling out the oddest items from his moderately sized bag : a set of metal food containers, a one cup electric kettle that boiled water in 30 seconds, a bag of 10 Star Wars novels, a pair of chopsticks and a coffee filter! And thus : coffee for everyone.

We got to talking and found out that Fiona was a 23 year old Australian from Darwin who had been away from home for the past four years. She had lived for a year in London and for several months in Ireland ... and had been travelling for the rest of the time. Wow. Masa had worked for three years in Japan and decided that he would travel around the world. He showed us his Japanese Airlines ticket which had the largest number of cities I had ever seen on a plane ticket. The multipaged ticket listed around 15+ cities around the world! That was one crazy ticket.

Soon Luke went to shower and prompty discovered the uniqueness of our room's shower. The heater had no adjustment knob and was permanently set on "dangerously scalding water of pain". He resorted to using a glass to collect cold water from the sink to wash up. Through some trial and error, we discovered that through turning the water on and off and other knob turning shenigans, it was possible to get about 5 seconds of warm water. Thus for the next three days, we all had really weird showers that took very, very long.

The next day, we set out to visit the kremlin here. However, we first stopped at the local Tourism Information Office. The office was housed in a little red log cabin and was called the Red Izba. Inside, we met a very helpful person, Ekaterina. She spoke English and helped us with our visa registration, information about things to do and etc. We visited the Red Izba many times in our time in Velikiy Novgorod.

We spent the day walking around the town center kremlin, which had been turned into a historical complex. The construction of the kremlin reminded me of medieval fortresses, with large walls surround the central area and towers set along the wall. We enjoyed the view of the city and the river from one of the towers along the wall...it was quite beautiful. The whole place felt like a classic European village that got stuck in time.

After admiring the buildings and the architecture in the kremlin, we visited the library (also in the Kremlin) in search for an internet cafe and got ushered to the Americas Centre where we discovered Ulyana! Ulyana worked there as the director of the Americas Centre. We also met Tanya, an English teacher in a local school. She was quite effusive and insisted on us writing a little about ourselves so that she could publish it in her school newspaper. After chatting with them for a little while, we left to continue looking around the city.

We exited the Kremlin area on the other side and found ourselves looking on a beautiful summer scene. A long footbridge stretched across the river and there were holidaygoers enjoying themselves on the beach. We walked around the city a little more before going in search of food.

We found a cafeteria-like place where they sold food "chap fan" style, with assorted dishes presented in metal trays with prices per kg stuck on them. I couldn't identify everything but there were potatoes, some vegetables, beet root, fish and chicken, mixed in different ways and in various creams and sauces. There was meat wrapped in cabbage and fried chicken patties and salmon slices. Some pointing and waving later, we all had trays of relatively cheap food. However, the cheapest food was still to be found in the supermarkets, where we would once again purchase bread, fish, bananas and yogurt to make up a meal.

The next day, we caught a bus (number 7) that took us 25 minutes out of town to visit a local monastery. It was very quiet and peaceful. We visited the church, rested for a while, and checked out the river. But there wasn't anything particularly interesting there, so we were soon on our way back to town. More wandering around town occured as the sun poured down. We sat down next to the river where I wrote this little scene :

I'm sitting on the raised bank of the Volkhov River, behind the Kremlin. The river flows through the city and is divided into two by a forested island rising from the middle of the waters. The sidewalk behind me bustles with people and on my right, the wide, paved footbridge extends across the broad river. Lovers lean on the railings, watching the crowds stroll across the paved road of the bridge. Along the near bank, families and friends sunbathe under the glowing late afternoon sun. Summer revelers walk down the stone steps pale and walk back up with their skin tinged with a red glow. The grassy slopes are dotted with blankets and the tanning backs of their owners, catching the warm summer glow. In the shadow of the bridge, a few fishermen try their luck in the rust red waters of the Volkhov. Distant happy cries and splashes waft over the river from the beach on the far bank, arrayed with sun umbrellas and volleyball nets. More sunning people are stretched out on the beach as children run into the water, hand-in-hand. The sunbathers are occasionally interrupted by a spray of sand from a loose volleyball. The swimmers are splashed by the wake of slowly passing motorboats travelling up the river. The glint of the sun off the domes of the cathedrals partly hidden by the trees complete the idyllic scene of the Volkhov River in summertime.

Finally, on the day of our departure, we met Tanya again and we talked with her about Russia. She told us a lot of things about living conditions and life on Russia in general. I was especially interested in her view of the education system since she was a English teacher.

After a very enlightening conversation over lunch, she left and we stayed, chilling until it was time for our train. So, we chilled. For four hours. Then we moved to another cafe and ordered a pot of tea each. And chatted and read and watched people. For another three hours.

Thus we accomplished seven full hours of cafe chilling in the historical city of Velikiy Novgorod. =) Velikiy Novgorod was nice but I guess we spent a little too much time here. It was definitely beautiful and enjoyable. It was my first truly memorable glimpse into the concept of an actual, European-ish, historical small walled town (the kremlin) that still exists in its original design. Thus we left the origin of Russia and headed towards its capital.

Next stop : Moscow!

-ky