Category Archive for ‘travel’ at Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'travel' Category

Russian Waterways 1

Published on December 9, 2008 in travel and water. 2 Comments

We passed by two different towns that had been inundated by dams. In each case, the church steeple poked through the surface of the water.

Here the whole village had disappeared, and all that was left was the church.

Here the town had been moved to the hill, and the steeple remained behind.

This is the same steeple a half hour later. I thought these shots were interesting. Of these three, do you have a favorite?

At first I thought these steeples were signs of water management in a totalitarian state, and then I thought of Celilo Falls. We dammed the rivers of the Pacific northwest, and Celilo Falls, about the same time the USSR inundated these villages.

This gorgeous photo is posted on Flickr by Alki1, captioned “The … Celilo Falls photographs were taken with a twin lens reflex Yashica in 1956 and that’s a long time ago.”

While the Russians were drowning village churches, we inundated God’s cathedral.

Northern Russia, an odd building

Published on November 13, 2008 in travel. 1 Comment

Here are some archectural embellishments that I’ve never seen before. I like the spiky roof tower.

These columns at the front door lend new meaning to the word adorable. (Get it? A-door-able (very bad wordplay).)

There are many fancy window frames.

I thought this one was particularly delightful

until I saw this one.

Here is the back of the building,

and here is a back balcony with two coordinated (but not matching) columns.

Russian Monasteries: an architectural detail

Published on November 7, 2008 in travel. 0 Comments

These are photographs of an architectural detail from three different monasteries.

Two of the monasteries were fully restored, and the third was still in process.

Here we have the same detail, but in such poor repair that it’s more like a memory of an architectural embellishment.

This one had a stencil-like overlay,

and this was my favorite. It’s a fairy-tale entrance

with a killer paint job.

Inside a Russian church

Published on November 6, 2008 in travel. 2 Comments

There were lots of churches and monasteries in the cities between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The churches we saw had some common characteristics. The churches were built for standing, not sitting.

Three walls would be completely covered by frescoes depicting biblical scenes.

The ceilings were frescoed as well. About four or five feet above the floor, at the bottom of this photograph, a ribbon of stylized text runs around the room; below that the wall is plain, and easily repainted when it becomes grubby.

The interior columns are painted too.

I love the frescoes. I think every public place would be improved by wall-to-wall murals. But the fourth wall is a different thing entirely. It isn’t friendly cartoons of biblical themes.

Each church has an icon wall, where rows of icons are set in carved and gilded frames. The workmanship on the icon wall is often amazing. Here, the carved columns between each icon may have been made from individual trunks. The frame of the Madonna and child is often encrusted with semiprecious stones.

The arrangement of an icon wall is stylized, with certain types of icons in each row and a specified number of rows. The placement of each icon has meaning. If I could read this icon wall, I could tell you the name of the church.

Here is a Russian kissing an icon. It seemed as though the icons that were most regularly kissed were behind glass.

This young man crossed the rope to kiss this particular Madonna. She was under glass too, so she was probably expecting him.

Some things are easier than others

Published on October 28, 2008 in travel. 8 Comments

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that interiors are much easier to photograph than prairie dogs. I took and sorted nearly 200 photos of prairie dogs yesterday and I’m sorry to say that I have very little to show for it. I’m afraid those dogs are going to have to get accustomed to me before they’ll give me some decent photos, so I’m doing another post on Catherine Palace.

Catherine I originally built the palace and Elizabeth, her daughter, expanded and gilded it. Catherine the Great, or Catherine II, redecorated one wing in the Neo-Palladium style.

This dining room is the first Neo-Palladium room I’ve ever been in; it’s done in pistachio and pink. It’s like being inside a jewel box.

The original palace interior featured countless gilded bare-breasted babes and babies. When Catherine the Great redecorated, she included scantily draped youths.

This is bas-relief for an empress. You might say the whole thing is a tad overdone, but the room next door is

perfection. It’s rose, antique white, and mahogany.

It’s one of the loveliest rooms I’ve ever seen. It’s bold and restful in the same breath.

And finally, this grand staircase was redecorated in the 1800s; the original mahogany banisters were replaced with white marble. (Most people paint when they want to lighten an interior, but not the Tsars.)

(This is not my photograph.) And here in the heart of the Russian empire you have the solution to the problem of what to do with those big Imari vases, plates and jars.

You’d probably need two high stepladders and some planks to dust them, but if you’re a Tsar, well… that’d be the very least of your worries.

Heating Catherine Palace

Published on October 23, 2008 in travel. 2 Comments

You’d think I could finish up with the Tsar’s summer palace, but I’m not even close. For example, how do you heat a palace? The ballroom was unheated–too many windows, too much floorspace. But most of the smaller rooms had tile stoves.

They’re tall, and they’re all over the place.

Some rooms have one stove,

and some rooms have two stoves.

Sometimes you can’t see if it’s a different room until you check the parquet pattern.

This dining room had one stove, but really could have used two. If I was eating with the Tsar, I would definitely opt for a seat near the stove.

Here you could sit near the stove and contemplate Buchholz’s 1768 portrait of Empress Elizabeth I

and here you can sit by the stove and contemplate a whole lot of paintings. The oils may be original, but the stoves are not. The floors are new as well: only one parquet floor survived, and it was in another section of the palace.

Catherine Palace 2

Published on October 22, 2008 in travel. 3 Comments

The Seige of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) was famously fatal. In 1941, the city was ringed by German and Finnish troops. Except for trucks driving on a single road across Lake Ladoga, no food or fuel entered the city for 900 days. Roughly a million citizens starved (Russians claim less, westerners say more). During this time Catherine Palace was used as a barracks for German troops, who burned the furniture for fuel and lit the palace on fire when they left.

By the end of the war, Catherine Palace was stripped and roofless.

This is a photo of a long series of palatial rooms after the war,

and I think I took this photo from the same spot. The interior of Catherine Palace has been reconstructed with the help of photos, drawings and paintings.

This is the ballroom of Catherine Palace (not my photo) and you can see that the walls are completely covered by carved, gilded figures.

It is unabashedly baroque.

1. ((often initial capital letter) of or pertaining to a style of architecture and art originating in Italy in the early 17th century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, … and by dramatic effect in which architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts often worked to combined effect.)

Instead of atlantes, the arches and ceilings are held up by ~~women and toddlers~~ caryatids and putti.

Here we have four putti holding things together between the window and ceiling,

and this unused door is supported by no less than eight bare-bosomed women and two putti.

Because it is Baroque, none of these figures are identical.

The gorgeous gals and plump babies aren’t confined to the ballroom. The small room next door had the only three original gilded figures in the palace.

The two darkened putti and the single bust on the wall are the only gilded figures that survived World War 2. All the other gilded forms were carved since then. WTF? It’s a repro.

Catherine Palace

Published on October 21, 2008 in travel. 3 Comments

Tsarskoye Selo, near Saint Petersburg, was the summer residence of the Tsars since 1717, when Catherine the Great hired a German architect to build a summer palace. It takes an empire to fund a building like Catherine Palace.

It is exceedingly large, built with an endlessly long facade and two side arms that make a U that is entered through this gilded gate.

This is the view looking left from the gate,

and this is the right side of the courtyard. The building is so big that the front entrance is missed in both these photos.

Catherine Palace is not only very large, it is also highly detailed.

During the reign of Catherine’s daughter Elizabeth (who owned more than 14,000 dresses when she died), the palace exterior was gilded with more than 100 kgs of gold.

I thought this photo was interesting for two reasons: you have to love the PVC drainage system, and aren’t those men holding up the building sort of creepy? According to Wikipedia, a support sculpted in the form of a man is an atlas (also known as a atlant, or atlantid; plural atlantes); The Roman term for such a sculptural support is telamon (plural telamones or telamons).

Peter the Great built Saint Petersburg by conscripting peasants from the length and breadth of the Russian Empire, and most of them died from cold, hunger, and disease. According to Andrew Osborn of the UK’s Independent, “historians believe the remains of some 100,000 18th-century serfs are buried beneath its wide Parisian-style avenues and grand Italianate palaces. … They gave their lives for the glory of then Imperial Russia and what they created, St Petersburg, stands as a monument to the single-mindedness of the Russian state.” Saint Petersburg and Catherine Palace were both built on the backs of serfs.

This lion’s face impressed me: look at his eyebrows, and his cowed expression. God Bless and keep the Tsar, he says, far away from me.

Russian Gingerbread

Published on October 16, 2008 in small town life and travel. 2 Comments

These gingerbread-y wooden houses, sometimes well-kept and sometimes falling down, were in every city we saw from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

The proportion and detailing were unfamiliar to me, and seemed to be characteristic.

Each of these houses have green fences!

This house has the most ornate porch railing I’ve ever seen,

and this is such a whimsical confection

that you could almost have it for dessert.

Kizhi Island

Published on October 14, 2008 in travel. 4 Comments

Kizhi Island is an outdoor museum of architecture.

It is very far north, nearly the same latitude as Rekjavik, Iceland, and has been inhabited for many centuries.

This was the most elaborate church (1714), with a simple graveyard next to it. The shingles are all aspen, and the entire structure is built without a nail.

This is a second church (1764), right next to the first church,

and a big belltower (1874) completes the complex (Russian churches don’t have belfries because that would mess up the onion dome).

Up close it seems like too many buildings too close together, but from farther away it knits into a seamless, nailless portrait of architectural perfection.

This is Russia’s oldest wooden church, the Saint Lazarus church from the 1300s (it was moved to the island). People have been coming distances to kiss this church for centuries. Russians seem to be big on kissing religious items. I saw lots of people kissing icons in church.

This is a traditional farmhouse, with a little sauna to the right. The animals live on the bottom floor during the winter, and enter through the door on the left.

This is the other side of the same house, with a cow ramp going up to the second floor, also for winter. They took the cows by boat to little islands to graze during the summer.

The houses had a lot of intricate gingerbread for decoration, and although the house looks spacious there were two interior rooms for the extended family. The rest of the space was for animals and winter workspace.

One of the rooms was for everyone to live in, and the other room was for guests.

I preferred the guest room.

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