Suzdal

January 6–7, 2002

I saw in the New Year 2002 out in the street, in the middle of Vetoshnyy Pereulok (on the other side of Red Square, behind the GUM department store) with a bottle of wine in my pocket — I didn’t make it to Red Square for when the clocks struck midnight, hence my wish didn’t come true.

A week later the journalist Norvezhsky Lesnoy and I decided to visit some of our vast Motherland, starting with Suzdal.

To save time we got on the metro and rode it to the last stop. There we got into a marshrutka and went further still to some other place. After that we got our own cab to somewhere else. When we got there we started trying to flag down a car for a paid lift. But none of drivers were taking the bait, neither the big ones, nor the minnows. It turned out that despite the impoverishment of Russia’s population no one is interested in making money by giving us a ride for 200 kilometres. Everyone was sated, content, and rich.

About an hour later we finally came across a hungry, irritated, and destitute driver who first agreed to take us, then abandoned us in the town of Pokrov under cover of night. All we found in Pokrov was a chocolate factory and a bus stop. We waited for the bus for an hour before paying for another lift from another driver who knew where Suzdal was and how much it costs to drive us there.

There were cops complete with cop cars stationed every 100 metres along the road. This instilled us with confidence in the safety of this itinerary. We later learnt that president Vladimir was traveling along the same road some way behind us, en route to the city of Vladimir.

Lesnoy and I forgot to factor in just one thing: Orthodox Christmas.

We arrived at the height of the celebrations.

We ended up in Suzdal’s hotel and tourism complex where we got one “luxury” (by Julian standards) hotel room between us. Everything else was already taken by tourists who’d come to listen to a skomoroks (harlequin) choir in the restaurant.

Our menu is 300 years old
The refectory is open

There wasn’t anywhere to eat. Every single seat in all of the restaurants was reserved for “delegations”. So we ate at a café where, in contrast to the prevailing standards at such establishments, the food was delicious and the atmosphere homey.

At 7 a.m. the next day we drove to the city where everyone and their dog knows that you don’t go out without gloves when it’s minus 25 degrees.

Ice-cream always available for sale

The streets are very tranquil, there are churches and little houses everywhere, it’s cosy and calm.

It’s so freezing cold that even the pigeons aren’t flying.

Barely a few hours had passed and we were already beginning to freeze. We quickly visited the local kremlin and admired the striking clock there, which was showing “d” minutes past “a” (the digits look like Old Church Slavonic letters).

We flagged down a car for another paid lift and went to Vladimir.

We got back to Moscow on a suburban commuter train that evening, said our goodbyes in the metro, and made a promise to go on another trip together the following year.

After that I went to buy myself a winter jacket, but I had to return the one I got the next day because it turned out to be a summer windbreaker.