Travel Notes

Novgorod Gold

After seven years of restoration, the Novgorod Kremlin has opened its Chamber of Facets (Гранитовая палата) to host a permanent exhibition of medieval Russian jewelry.

The fifteenth-century red brick Gothic building was used by the court and high society of the Novgorod Republic and is Russia’s oldest civilian stone building. Its vaulted rooms have been retrofitted with state of the art lighting that now showcases the gold jewelry and various religious artifacts, some of which date to the fifth century and were commissioned by Novgorod’s wealthy monasteries.

The Novgorod Kremlin complex is a World Heritage Site protected by UNESCO and is also worth visiting in order to see the museum’s famous examples of early writing on birch-bark. These amazing artifacts offer a glimpse into daily life in the fifteenth century and point to the medieval city’s high degree of literacy.

Good Flight

Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship airline, has launched a low-cost subsidiary called Dobrolyot (literally “Good Flight,” which also happens to be the original name of the first Soviet airline, founded in 1923). It is starting operations with just three planes (Boeings and a Sukhoy Superjet), all of which are flying from Moscow to Crimea’s only civilian airport, in Simferopol, following a call by authorities to lower prices on the route.

To keep prices at rock bottom, compared with Aeroflot’s normally rather expensive tickets, the company is charging an extra fee for almost all additional services, like meals and baggage check.

Tickets are reportedly as low as $60 for a round trip to the peninsula, a figure impossible to verify as all seats are sold out through March 2015. As it receives more planes, Dobrolyot plans to add routes, including flights to St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and other major cities.

Russia previously had two other budget airlines, Sky Express and Avianova. Both closed in 2011.

dobrolet.com

Mikhalkov Unveiled

Moscow has dedicated a monument to Soviet poet Sergei Mikhalkov. Well-known as an author of children’s poems, Mikhalkov also wrote the Soviet national anthem, rewrote it in 1970 to excise references to Stalin, then again in 2000 to fit the new realities of Putin’s Russia. The poet’s monument stands on Povarskaya Street, in the capital’s iconic Arbat neighborhood, and depicts the author sitting on a park bench, seemingly lost in thought. Mikhalkov passed away in 2013. His sons are the film directors Andrei Konchalovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov.

Lone Travelers

Twenty-nine percent of Russian women who travel do so alone, according to a survey by tripadvisor.com. Interestingly, there are more solo lady travelers from Russia than Italy (25 percent) or France (14 percent).

Asked why they prefer individual travel, Russian women said that by traveling this way: they don’t have to think about other people’s needs and can do what they want (35 percent); they don’t want to wait for their friends or relatives to make up their minds about travel (32 percent); other people never have time (16 percent).

Magic Mustard

Staraya Sarepta, an area of Volgograd that used to be a town in its own right and has been made into an historic preserve, was the site of Russia’s first ever mustard factory. So of course a mustard museum has been opened there.

Staraya Sarepta was populated in the 1760s by Germans from Saxony who were members of the Moravian church. The village developed well economically, due to the various incentives offered to Germans colonizing the Volga region, an area previously populated mostly by Kalmyks. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, residents planted mustard and sent the first batches of their output to St. Petersburg, where it was widely acclaimed.

About a century later, the colony was dissolved. Moravians left the country, but Germans tied to other churches stayed behind. The Sarepta Museum’s website claims that the town is the world’s third mustard capital, after Dijon and Devonshire.

altsarepta.ru