A couple weeks ago my wife and I went to Rostov for the day. It's a small city (about 45,000) on a lake around 200km north of Moscow. It's called "Velikiy" (the Great) to differentiate it from Rostov-na-Donu, which is far to the south and around a million people. Rostov Velikiy has long been a stop for tourists, as it has an enormous kremlin and many beautiful churches. The town itself, however, is in terrible shape, like many towns in the Russian provinces. All the oil money is in Moscow. In Rostov, streets, sidewalks and many buildings are literally crumbling, and the whole town is strewn with cigarette butts and empty bottles. On the other hand, the air is relatively clean, and the city is very quiet. There seems to be a very high unemployment rate and just about zero investment. On our way back to Moscow, we passed through Pereslavl-Zalesskiy, which is also on a lake, about the same size, but full of new "elite" apartment buildings and other new construction. It's only around 50km closer to Moscow, but maybe that's enough to make a difference. [For me, one of the more interesting things is that the city is far enough north that you can hear a northern accent. It differs in that the unaccented vowels are actually pronounced (i.e., "govorit" instead of "guhvuhrit", as you would hear in Moscow). There are some other slight differences also, like saying "s Moskvy" instead of "iz Moskvy". But I suppose this isn't a linguistics forum, is it?]
To get to Rostov, there's a very nice express version of the elektrichka (commuter train), which gets you there in about two and a half hours. The tickets were about 400 rubles (25r=$1), and that was in first class. Unfortunately, the last train back to Moscow left earlier than we wanted, so we took a bus, which was much slower - about four hours.
Some pictures taken from the train - (not completely sure I've matched the pictures to the correct towns):
Khot'kovo
Aleksandrov
Petrovskoye
Rostov
Like I said, the town is crumbling (this is ulitsa Lunacharskogo):
...but also full of cute wooden houses:
This is a school; the building used to be a hospital:
The central square (ulitsa Karla Marksa):
Unfortunately, directly across from the main entrance to the kremlin (entrance fee: 3r) is an abandoned building with no roof and no windows:
Kremlin churches:
Lake side of the kremlin, ulitsa Sakko:
19-century trading arcades, east side of Kremlin (Sovietskaya ploshchad'):
Back inside the kremlin:
Trading arcades on Sovietskaya ploshchad' again:
We wandered down to the lake. As the afternoon wore on the lakefront became crowded with fishermen. There were moments when there was so much swearing I wasn't sure they were still speaking Russian.
Before going any further we went back to the kremlin and had lunch in one of the few remaining utterly soviet restaurants. You know the kind: the menu has the accountant's stamp and signature so you know it's not a counterfeit menu (!) and the waitress tells you what to order. Actually, though, it was quite good and, compared to Moscow anyway, quite inexpensive. There was some nice stained glass next to the entrance:
At this point, the clouds and sun were so overwhelmingly cool that we took another walk around the kremlin:
And then down ulitsa Podozerka to the Yakovlevskiy monastery:
And back to the center of town:
That's it. We were only in Russia about three weeks (another week was spent in France), but thanks to the miracle of digital cameras we managed to take something like 3500 pictures. I may post more if anyone's interested - as time allows.
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