Travel Notes

Painting Khrushchev

Eight graffiti teams have breathed life into a residential area in Moscow’s northeastern region. As part of the “Paint Moscow” project, Russian and visiting artists attacked the gray walls of twelve “khrushchevka” apartment buildings with cans of paint. 

Khrushchevkas are five-story concrete tilt-ups that were widely built in the 1960s to address the post-war housing crisis. They are renowned for their poor construction. Ironically, the newly-decorated houses are scheduled to be demolished in 2010 under Moscow’s plans for housing redevelopment. 

“Seems like in Moscow these houses are serving the purpose of the Berlin wall,” the head architect of a Moscow suburb told Vedomosti. “First we paint the symbol of an era, and then we demolish it.” 

Gazprom vs. UNESCO

Gazprom wants to build a 300-meter tall skyscraper near the historic center of St. Petersburg. Critics claim that the structure, to be completed by 2016, would ruin the city’s historic skyline, and public disapproval led to a 3,000-strong protest against the skyscraper this fall. UNESCO has expressed concerns that the building will alter the city’s historic center, which is Russia’s oldest inclusion on the World Heritage list of cultural monuments. In fact, the tower’s construction could well remove St. Petersburg from the list, which presently includes 15 Russian cultural landmarks, including Kizhi Island, the Moscow Kremlin, Lake Baikal and Novodevichy Monastery. 

Mining Attraction

A new mining museum with authentic flavor has opened in Kemerovo, a Siberian city on the Tom river. A replica of a 1910 coal mine with oil lamps and coal-covered tunnels, the museum hopes to give visitors a sense of what it was like to be a miner at the beginning of the last century. Kemerovo is part of Russia’s Kuznets basin – one of the biggest coal mining areas in the world – a region that will soon celebrate its centennial. 

Sochi Island

Resort development is picking up steam in the greater Sochi area, future site of the 2012 Winter Olympics. A new residential and resort complex is planned off the city’s coast, on an artificial island that will be shaped like the geographic outline of Russia. The island will be 2.5 km long and 1.5 km wide, with enough room for 50 to 70 thousand residents. The project, dubbed “Federation Island,” was designed by Dutch architect Erick Van Egeraat and may be financed by the Dubai-owned company Allied Business Consultants LLC, reports New Region Agency, at a projected cost of $6.2 billion.

Budget Skies

Ryanair, the Dublin-based budget airline, may soon land in Russia. If Russia, along with Ukraine, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey, sign new bilateral open-skies agreements with the European Union, Ryanair will add flights to these countries, Bloomberg reported. At present, Morocco is Ryanair’s only non-EU destination.

Destination cities would also have to make some airport changes, said an airline representative. Ryanair is Europe’s most profitable airline, with 500 routes, and it cuts costs by flying to cheaper, secondary terminals. The airline presently has flights from Dublin to Kaunas (Lithuania) and Riga (Latvia).

Goodbye Lenin Street

About 130 streets in Kiev (seven percent of the total) may soon be renamed, said Sergei Rudyk, vice-mayor of the Ukrainian capital. City authorities propose eradication of all street names alluding to the Soviet period and will unveil the complete list of proposed new names by year’s end. Lutsk, a city in western Ukraine, undertook just such a desovietization on October 1. “I want street names to reflect Ukrainian history,” said Bogdan Shiba, mayor of Lutsk.  

Meanwhile, some counseled caution. “In many cases, Kievans accept their street name and would rather see the renaming costs go into construction of playgrounds or building maintenance,” said Vasily Gorbal, head of Kiev’s Partii Regionov organization (New Region Agency).

Dividing the Islands

The Russian government recently decreed that all monuments of religious value on the Solovetsky islands will be handed over to the Orthodox Church. The White Sea archipelago is the site of the Solovetsky monastery, built in the 15th century. 

In the Soviet era, Solovki was turned into one of the first prison camps – a blueprint for the Gulag system. In 1992, the monastery reopened and the complex (which includes a museum) was put on the UNESCO World Heritage list. 

Current museum director Mikhail Lopatkin expressed concern that the church will sever non-Orthodox tourists’ access to the landmark. “Solovki is not just a spiritual center, or only a symbol of repressions, but primarily a museum,” said Igor Repnevsky of the Arkhangelsk Cultural Committee (Novye Izvestiya). Ksenia Chernega, a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate, said the handover will not lead to drastic changes. “Neither the state nor the church are planning to liquidate the museum,” she said.