Novgorod the "Great"

My last update was a little big on the “America-bashing”, so I am making it my goal with this post to level the playing field, not wanting to come off like an uninformed Dostoevskian “adolescent” (literary puns are fun, kids!). So this past weekend our group went on a mandatory excursion to “Novgorod the Great”. They make this distinction because there is another city in Russia also named Novgorod, only it is called (and I am not making this up) “Lower Novgorod”, with lower basically taking the meaning of “lesser”. I guess we know who the middle child here is, at any rate. Of course, the reason the one we went to is the superior Novgorod is because it is the oldest city in the Russian empire (approximately 1200 years old, give or take). This, of course, means that there are a lot of historical sites to visit. And by a lot of historical sites, I of course mean a lot of churches. Churches seem to be synonymous with predetermined tour schedules, as apparently history is not allowed to happen unless Christians came and left their mark. And they left their mark literally every. twenty. feet.

Before I get on with this, however, I will point out that Novgorod is beautiful. In spite of the fact that there is nothing but churches for miles, they are absolutely beautiful churches. Some of the older ones don’t even have the obnoxious meticulously touched up look that a lot of places of historical significance tend to get. Crumbling wall murals, narrow and rickety staircases, and some truly epic domes make for some fantastic sight-seeing and you really get a feeling that history was allowed to simply run its course, rather than be fought off at every turn. Then you notice the scaffolding.

I guess I was faked out by the first church we went to, because after that every other one (literally) was covered in scaffolding and basically looked like shabby construction sites where you could see onion shaped spires sticking out of the top. The lines of portapotties and orange safety cones really added to the historical mystique. And of course, CIEE decided that, after waking us up at 6:30 to depart by 8, we would go on a 5 hour walking tour to every identical church in the area while our Russian tour guide spoke far too quickly to be understood by anyone. Cap it off with the fact that you couldn’t even take pictures inside the churches (which unlike the outsides, weren’t under construction MOST of the time) and you’re left with a vaguely uneasy feeling of “well what the shit did we come here for?”

It also happened to be one of our merry band’s birthday while we were there, so we decided to try to find a bar. Had we been anywhere else in the entirety of Russia, this would not have been a problem, but we had to walk a solid 40 minutes all over town asking locals whether there was any place we could drink. Most of them just laughed. Bad sign. We finally found an outdoor café a solid 30 minutes from the hotel, and that was the best we got (granted, cafes in Russia are basically bars, but without the “let’s get rowdy it’s our friend’s birthday” atmosphere).

I have often complained that Boulder is like a personal hell to me, on account of the fact that unless you’re into hiking and sporty crap, or on an absolutely copious amount of drugs, there is simply nothing to do there. I now rescind that statement and will say that if your lifestyle is Metropolitan, then Novgorod is the work of Satan (ironic, given the number of churches and monasteries, but hey, I hear the devil is renowned for his sense of humor). You walk around this place, look at pretty stuff, and slowly come to the horrifying realization that that is all there is to do there, and what’s more, once you have seen one of these pretty places, you have most assuredly seen them all. Suddenly all of these places lose their beauty and you start to resent them for simply existing. It’s like going to a historical recreation village that is an entire city, but instead of people telling you interesting facts about the past, you get scowled at by angry looking babushkas and/or monks. At least historical recreation villages stateside have people in funny costumes.