No, I have not been captured by aliens. I have not been ill. I have not been upset, depressed, or preoccupied. I have been traveling. For the last 9 days, we visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.
As long as I can recall, I have had a mental map of Russia as a dark and frightening place. After all, throughout my childhood they were trying to “bury†us and we looked upon them as an evil empire. And, indeed, there was repression and a lack of any semblance of freedom. Russia and its satellites, the USSR, were closed to the west. They feared democracy and capitalism. They suppressed religion. People we wanted to participate in Jewish prayer or even study Hebrew were harassed and often arrested. But now, a decade and a half after the breakup of the Soviet Union, it is a travel destination.
To say that it was beautiful would be an understatement. We visited palaces filled with such opulence that it took one’s breath away. We saw the onion-shaped spires on the cathedrals, painted and formed with the appearance of marzipan candy. We saw the canals St. Petersburg. We saw the hundreds of fountains of Peterhof. We saw art that was indescribable in the Pushkin Gallery, the Kremlin Armory, and, of course, the Hermitage. In the Hermitage, we were able to see the hidden collection—paintings that were stolen from private families by the Nazis. These paintings were brought to St. Petersburg after the Second World War and hidden. They were only shown for the first time in 1995 and to this day, one is not permitted to take any photographs of them because the Russians do not plan to return them to the families who had once owned them. Among these paintings were a large number of paintings by impressionist masters.
So beauty was one large theme of the trip. Beauty was everywhere: in the underground stations, in the beautiful neo-classical buildings, in the large number of parks and gardens. We enjoyed a number of performances of folklore, a capella singing, a circus, and a ballet. The people on the streets too were beautiful. The Russian women, by and large, dress well and are lovely to look at.
Another theme for me was that of the resurgence of Jewish life in Russia. Particularly in Moscow, the community is active and there is life. There is a large community center in Moscow that offers classes and cultural activities, but also affords the Jewish people there exercise equipment, a gym, a library/resource center with about 50 computers, a large performance hall, and a very elegant kosher catering facility that serves delicious food. The building is modern, spotless, and is used each day by hundreds of people.
I felt in Moscow and St Petersburg what I had felt in Budapest—people trying to recover from years of repression and neglect. Everywhere things were being rebuilt and renovated. Workers stood on scaffolding chipping and patching and painting the walls of buildings in warm ochres, and blues and roses. One got the feeling that in a few years, everything will be painted and fixed and the cities will be even more beautiful than they are now.
I have posted a selection of the pictures I took.
