After steaming for what seemed an hour past wharves of silent shipping of all kinds the Braemar eventually swung to port and turned around to be ready for a quick departure – which turned out to be not so quick as I will explain. There is no cruise terminal – only 4 or 5 cruise ships visit Murmansk annually - so we were moored at Berth 43-45, opposite a warehouse with some pallets laid across the crane rail tracks, cordoned off with yellow tape as a ‘gateway to Russia’.
The welcoming party consisted of some smart men in black suits who stood guard all day on the quay, a number of mangy Alsatian dogs – I never did find out if they were part of security or just a pack of feral animals that patrolled this area!
Immigration took for ever, over 4 hours with many members of the crew being called up for face-to-face interviews. I don’t recall these kinds of delay when I visited St Petersburg or Yalta but then cruise ship visits to Murmansk are rare. Eventually, after what the Cruise Director described as “a few challenges!!”, the ship was cleared and we could away on tour. If we thought today was a challenge it had nothing compared with what was to come in Archangel!!
To be honest Murmansk is not a pretty city or port, just block after block of drab 9 storey, prefabricated, concrete apartment blocks but that is Russia. Today in post-Soviet Russia locals can buy their own apartments and this provides for some variation from the monotonous, drab exteriors, although the right to buy is about to end. I remember when I went to Moscow in 1989 wondering how anyone found their way home since the blocks there were endless and in the snowbound and signless streets you could have been lost for hours!!
You quickly get used to the smell of sulphur in the air as well from the numerous red and white chimneys (See first photo above) of the coal fired power stations that not only provide electricity but for the extensive district heating systems to the numerous apartment blocks.
China of course has seen immense growth in its urban populations but I don’t recall the residential blocks looking quite as menacing and monotonous as in Russia, or least Murmansk.
The only memorable building on the way to our first stop was the very typically Russian railway station (See photo) with a direct train service south to St Petersburg taking 25 hours or Moscow in 30+ hours or Sochi on the Black Sea Coast – 3 days! Like most other countries modern Russians, our guide told us, have discovered the internet and cheap flights.
We first went to the site where the city was founded a simple wooden cross and to the Palace of Culture, or Kirov Palace next to it, neither impressive enough to earn a photo here. Next door, however, is the the city offices where civil weddings take place and the street was crowded with brides, grooms and their guests. May is not a popular month for weddings in Russia, a belief based on some long forgotten legend that suggests that marriages in May will not be successful. This being a Saturday in June meant that we had arrived at the peak of the wedding season.
We were to find wedding parties everywhere that we went since Russians have a delightful tradition of celebrating their marriages on the move by visiting monuments or viewpoints around the city – accompanied by much laughter and champagne. This is another cultural characteristic that I recall from my visit to Moscow in 1989 standing on the heights overlooking Moscow below the monolithic university.
Our next stop was to the Monument to the Defenders of the Kola Land – Alyosha – a massive 116 ft tall statue, erected in 1974 depicting a Russian World War II soldier looking out towards Finland and the attacking German forces in WWII.
No comments:
Post a Comment