Travel Notes

To Moscow!

According to the Moscow Tourist Committee (MTC), more than two million foreign tourists visited the Russian capital this past fall. RIA Novosti said this year’s numbers set a record, and the MTC indicated that the capital is ahead of schedule on its tourism development program. 

It had been estimated that Moscow would host five million foreign tourists per year by 2010, and new hotel construction was planned in accordance with this forecast. 

According to the Committee, the number of foreign tourists visiting Moscow each year has more than doubled since 1999 (see chart), to an expected 4 million this year.

Work Rules

Officially, some 350,000 foreigners work legally in Russia. Unofficially, however, the number of illegal foreign workers is estimated at 10 to 15 times that, because of onerous residency rules. Currently, a foreign worker can labor in Russia for a year, then must leave the country and re-obtain permission to continue working. The Federal Migration Service, Vremya Novostey reports, is working with the State Duma to ease the restrictions and bring more workers in from the cold. The proposed change would allow foreigners to work for three years, with the option of a one-year extension. 

Luxurious Lock-Up

According to travel.ru, an unusual hotel will begin construction next year in Nizhny Novgorod: it will be built on the site of an old prison. Three local investors have already shown an interest in the project, which is expected to cost $1 million. 

According to the plan, the “prison hotel” will include 30-rooms, a café, restaurant, multi-media hall, and direct access to the prison museum (which is what the building currently houses), where guests will be able to visit jail cells and marvel at antique instruments of torture. What is more, museum workers said that the facility may be haunted – strange and uncanny things happen there after dark.

The Nizhny Novgorod Prison was built between 1819-1824. It is comprised of a main prison building with four towers and a church with belfry. The ground and first floors held mass cells. Solitary confinement cells were located in the towers and the basement was used as a dungeon. Prisoners were sorted and put into cells based on the crime they had committed. The building served as a prison until the 1920s, when it was converted to workshops and storage space. Many famous people were incarcerated here. The writer Maxim Gorky “visited” twice.

Tourist Police

St. Petersburg hopes to polish its image by establishing a special “tourist police” by the summer of this year, RFE/RL reported. Staffed mostly by students, the police will be uniformed, have “special communications devices,” and have as their primary purpose aiding foreign visitors to the city. They will be paid approximately R500 per shift. 

 russian classics

IRINA. To sell the house, to finish everything here, and then, to Moscow…

OLGA. Yes. To Moscow, as fast as possible.

Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov 

(translated by Gerard R. Ledger)

 prison memoir

“Prison gave me time for contemplation and reflection, which is so rare amid the bustle of business life. It gave me the opportunity to read books. Prison became a sort of liberator for me… Thank you, my “Matrosskaya Tishina.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Soul Man

According to RIA Novosti, a monument to Oblomov’s sofa has been unveiled in Ulyanovsk (formerly Simbirsk), hometown of the eponymous novel’s author, Ivan Goncharov. In Oblomov, the unforgettable main character spends his days meditating on the sofa. The monument to Oblomov is located near a monument to Goncharov, on Goncharov Street. 

The monument was the brainchild of local historian Sergei Petrov, his concept being that of “a philosophical sofa.” The monument is actually comfortable to sit on and to contemplate. A 19th century sofa from the Museum of Art was the prototype, and the couch is inscribed as follows: “Here I understood the poetry of idleness, and I will be true to it unto death, if only want does not force me to take up shovel and bar. Ivan Goncharov. Simbirsk. 1849.”

 russian classics

With Oblomov, lying in bed was neither a necessity (as in the case of an invalid or of a man who stands badly in need of sleep) nor an accident (as in the case of a man who is feeling worn out) nor gratification (as in the case of a man who is purely lazy). Rather, it represented his normal condition. Whenever he was at home – and almost always he was at home – he would spend his time in lying on his back. Likewise he used but the one room – which was combined to serve both as bedroom, as study, and as reception-room – in which we have just discovered him.

Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov 

(translated by C. J. Hogarth)