Yekaterinburg 1
My initial plan was to post each day as it happened, but the last two days at Yekaterinburg were quite hectic and I didn't get down to chronicling my days there.
We reached Ekaterinburg (pronounced Yekaterinburg where the u in 'burg' is pronounced as the u in put) on Thursday evening.
It was then that it struck us that we had landed on a long weekend, and would need to get some errands done before everything shut down for victory day.
We walked around the town for a bit and had a bite of dinner and went back to our hotel.
Friday morning, after breakfast, we met up with our guide Svetlana. We had discussed the holiday parade closures with Svetlana earlier and juggled our itinerary around road closures.
We headed out of Ekaterinburg (pronounced with a Y) and drove into the countryside.
We passed cars and people carrying flags, both Russian and Soviet, all over town.
We drove west our of Ekaterinburg. This is important. I will mention why, later.
Our first stop of the day was at a memorial for the victims of the Great Purge.
It was Victory day, and some people were laying flowers and lighting candles at the memorial.
A few years ago, during some construction or excavation work in the region, mass graves were found here. And a memorial was set up on the spot.
The low walls in the distance are inscribed with the names of those who vanished from this region during the great purge.
Svetlana mentioned that her late grandmother's husband was a priest, and vanished during the purge, after being accused of baptizing youth from the communist party.
Ekaterinburg is built on the Eastern slopes of the Ural mountains. And we drove west.
And reached this point.
To the East was Asia, to the west, Europe.
We were at the border of Europe and Asia.
And yes, we did step across the border.
And got a certificate for it.
This makes me a 'certified borderline' case??
Svetlana has asked me earlier if I could wear a skirt as we were headed to a functional monastery. I looked up the weather report and decided on a salwar kameez (with thermals of course). After all 24°C is good weather, right?
Wrong!!
Someone somewhere didn't get the memo. Strong winds came out of nowhere and it dropped to 8°C!
I turned to Svetlana and asked her. She too was bundled up in a sweater and very casually mentioned that Ural weather was rather unpredictable and yes it was a little windy.
If she'd told me that I would have dressed for an Arctic expedition.
'A little windy' in the Urals is like saying 'the Taj Mahal is a fairly decent tomb'.
Talk about classic understatement.
I might have been 'properly attired' but my extremeties were freezing.
Before I forget, something very cute happened at the start of the day.
I was going back to my room after breakfast. An old lady and her granddaughter got into the lift with me. She saw my outfit and asked, 'India?'
I said 'Da', opened the translate app and tried to set up the conversation option.
I started to type out something when she noticed I was wearing the orange and black St George Ribbon to commemorate Victory Day.
She said something rather voluble in Russian, I said Da and continued to try and get the app functioning.
She wiped her eyes, said something again, and before I could get network and activate the app, smothered me with hugs and kisses, said Dasvidanya and stepped off the lift, smiling and waving.
Either I made her happy by wearing the ribbon, or maybe I promised to buy a lot of oil and gas.
Either way, I win.
Getting back to our tour...
We made our way to the Ganina Yama Monastery.
The Ganina Yama was originally a mine. On an early morning 17th July 1918, 11 bodies were thrown into the pits of the mine there.
The previous day, the family of Czar Nicholas II, his wife Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna, his children, the Tsarevich Alexei, his daughters, the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia, their personal physician Dr Bodkin, and three other loyal family retainers, were shot dead at the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg.
They had been held captive at the Ipatiev house for 78 days. They had been exiled from Moscow and were on their way to Siberia, Russia's favourite exile site.
At some point the Bolsheviks decided that it was inconvenient for the Royals to stay alive, and they were summarily executed and their bodies consigned to the pits of the Ganina Yama mine.
Here's where the story diverges.
Nikolai Sokolov, an investigator with the White Army (royalist supporters), investigated the Ganina Yama mine. The Bolsheviks had used acid etc on the bodies to destroy them completely and make identification impossible.
With fabric scraps, jewellery and other evidence collected onsite, Sokolov concluded that this was the site where the Romanov bodies were concealed. He didn't have time to corroborate his evidence as the White army was losing control of the Area and he had to leave.
There's another report that the Bolsheviks suspected the location was compromised and moved the remains a few miles away to Porosyenkov Log. In the mid to late 1980s 11 bodies from the Porosyonkov Log were identified as the remains of the Romanovs, with DNA evidence from living relatives of Nicholas and Alexandra.
(On a very irrelevant and irreverent side note, where is Rasputin buried? The nation wants to know!)
Getting back on track.. I know this is rambling quite a bit, but I want to set up the groundwork for the Monastery.
In the meantime, the Russian Orthodox Church, in the early part of this millennium, preferred to side with the White Army's findings over that of the Bolsheviks, and declared the Ganina Yama a holy ground.
With the philanthropic support of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical company, the Church built the Ganina Yama Monastery on that site, and canonised the Romanovs as saints of the Russian Orthodox Church, along with Dr Bodkin and their retainers.
Seven chapels were built there, one for each family member.
The entrance to the Ganina Yama Monastery.
The depression is the pits where Sokolov claims to have found signs of the Romanovs.
There are seven major chapels built around Ganina Yama. One for each canonised member of the Romanovs.
After the concert we went to this 'Private Museum' a little outside Ekaterinburg.
Private Museum, you ask? Private Museum, I say.
My understanding of Svetlana's translation is that, these are the private collections of the one of the Ural mining magnates (apparently not an Oligarch... go figure)
There's a huge open pavilion, and 5 different museums.
We opted for Wings of Victory and Buran, which Svetlana said was something to do with space.
the friendly neighbourhood mining magnate (not oligarch) managed to get his hands on one of the three made. The other two were supposedly destroyed.
The other hangar.
And then we saw this cargo helicopter. I dont think i have seen a helicopter this massive
The wings of Victory museum is a collection of fighter aircraft from the very early 20th century onwards.
For the two of us, our greatest attractions were the Messerschmitt, the Junker, The Focke Wulf... brought back memories of the number of Commando comics we used to read as kids.
the OH was like a kid let loose in a candy shop.
Another level had a model of the Russian Po-2. These were the planes used by the Soviet all-woman Aviation regiment.
I remember reading about them somewhere a long time ago. These gutsy women pilots were reputed to be daring and reckless, flew sorties really low, well below radar detection and created absolute havoc, and dropped a few bombs while they were at it.
They were rather unkindly referred to as Stalin's "Night Witches" and were loathed by the enemy. (You go Girl!! keep flying high wherever you are)
We had a fabulous time at the museum but called it quits as we were quite unprepared for the weather.
The open exhibit was spectacular. Ilyushins, Antonovs, a Space launch aircraft, a Sukhoi, a Mig... you name it.
but we decided to give it a miss. we were dressed for 26°C, which could go to 18°C, but was actually 7° or 8°C.
In the interests of our mental wellbeing we decided to forego open air explorations. At this point my weather app even had the cheek to tell me that it was 8°C but feels like 2°.
I didn't want to become the next exhibit at the museum, the living frozen popsicle.
In the words of Svetlana, there's no such thing as bad weather in Russia. Only bad clothing choices.
Well, that's telling us.
Next time around I refuse to believe the weather apps.
Till the next update..
From Russia... With Love
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