4th rv a traveler's memoirs- Siberian journey 1

          Siberian Journey

                    1.

On board an Aeroflot bound for Moscow, when he imagined that

a black train was fading away into the forest of silver-twinkling birches,

the below passages in "East of the Sun" occurred to his mind:
........."Siberia" itself is a mystical term, derived from the Mongolian
siber ("beautiful", "wonderful", and "pure"), and the Tartar sibir,
which means "the sleeping land". The sleeping beauty at its heart was
Lake Baikal, the oldest lake in the world, the largest fresh-water lake
......It was revered by a number of Siberian tribes as "Holy Sea".
Even the Russian, who developed various superstitions
about its sudden, apparently willful storms
(whipped up by winds sweeping down from its volcanic ramparts),
would say that " it is only upon Baikal in autumn
that a man learns to pray from his heart."
Anyway Moon who liked to regard himself as a 'Bohemians' was driven
by the phrases in 'East of The Sun' to abruptly set out on a long journey
to Russia. Before flying on board a Moscow- bound Aeroplot,
he decided where to go: Moscow and Petersburg, and
Irkusk in Siberia as the final destination. Regarding Irkusk, the book
said to him that the city is not far from  Baikal. It was because
he was anxious to see the lake by it and smell the air in person.  
 In the airplane he would mumble to himself:
"What mysteriousness on earth does Baikal have in it ?"
"how powerful are the storms of the lake?"
" Now it is February. How different will the lake in spring be
from that in autumn?

The outskirt of Moscow laden with snow, seen through the window
of the taxi running toward the downtown, was in a sense a landscape 
in deep silence, in which there were nothing except the flat lands 
deprived of the light, trees bare of leaves, and the deeply cloudy sky  
A great grey-colored landscape realistically painted in inky black!
He wondered: What does deprived Moscow of the light",
Where is the light gone?" "Gone to the sea of Cadiz of Andalusia?"

The Moscow railroad station was one hour and more away on foot 
from the hostel where he stayed 2 nights. The hall of the station,
crowded with  a lot of people, seated or lying on the benches,
was comparatively quiet, After a while a man in black began to play,
unaccompanied, a tune which was thought to be a Beethoven
on the grand piano. Moon stood by the window side near the piano,
looking outside at the vertical top of a tower far away. with his ears
given to the overwhelming sound of the piano tune.
And three men fitted out as travelers stood separately not far from
the piano. one leaned his body against the wall, gazing at the pianist,
another was looking out through the window like Moon, listening with his
and the last standing with hands on his back seemed to concentrate
his mind and ears on the music judged by one of his hands moving,
as if it were dancing to the rhythm and melody.
As soon as the pianist was playing another tune, Moon began
to mumble in spite of himself:
Just a minute, familiar to my ears. It must be a Tchaikovsky.
Well ....maybe not. Judged by the tone color in deep solitude,
it might be a List or Chopin.
No...no, the tone color of the piece in a bit exotic atmosphere.
Could it not be a  Mussorogsky ?
You , Moon! What is the use of trying to know the name of the composer?
Just give your ears to the piece, the  unworldly touch, sweet and bitter.
He kept on saying to himself:
Hey! Look at the traveler with his hands on the back. 
his fingers are dancing in harmony with the rhythm and melody!
Oh.  It seems that I come alone to Moscow to experience
a spiritual shivering at the heavenly sound like this,
now in the station where there is none to know me!

The unexpected piano performance was finished and he had to be seated 
doing nothing in the hall for another 2 hours till the time when the train will
depart to Siberia.
So he began to beguile the tedious time thinking of his private feeling
about the hostels of the 2 cities he had spent a few nights each
'Vagabond hostel' in Moscow  of which he checked out this morning
was much more comfortable to stay in than 'Nord hostel', in Petersburg.
In the former hostel, he enjoyed breakfast and even internet free. 
There a young hosteller from London, kindly enough, presented him
a literary book about Russian history titled 'Russka'.  
More than anything else, the former hostel was like a home,

compared with the latter which was of business-like atmosphere.

And he kept on filling up the dull hour in the station by looking back

upon Neva River and Nevsky, the main street of Petersburg;
Nava river in the morning was all ashy.
In addition to that, Pellets of snow were silently falling down on it.
Then the water underneath looked dirty and muddy.
So I turned my eyes afar.
The river was rather a subject matter for impressionist painters
who would like to view from a distance.
hexagon-shaped structures of granite, straight line of the broad road,
the long embankment, and the river running
with a giant lump of ice embraced in it and on it the misty sun!
It looked like an impressionistic landscape.

As for the Nevsky street, thinking of the novel of "Nevsky Prospect"
by Gogol he went to the Nord Hostel, his destination on foot for
over an hour, in stead of going by taxi, in order to feel

how it in reality was. He had read the novel before starting his journey

to Russia. The story of Nevsky Prospect begins by saying that there’s

nothing better than Nevsky—at least not in St. Petersburg—

and the writer quickly establishes it as a place where people promenade

and forget about whatever needs to be done.Though a part of everyday life,

Nevsky street is also apart from everyday life. At the end of the story,
he was instructed not to believe Nevsky, It’s all a (day)dream and
a deception, and a demon lights the lamps to show everything
in a false light.

And it was followed by a couple of differences between the 2 cities
he had read in his house through internet before his departure:
Officially the capital of Russia is Moscow.
However St. Petersburg is often called the Northern Capital.
This isn’t by chance.
These two cities came to prominence at separate times,
and they have been competing with each other for 300 years, beginning in 1703,
when Emperor Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg on the banks

of the river Neva. The reason for the confrontation lies in the fact that
St. Petersburg was originally built to be exactly what is: the opposite

of Moscow. It is the embodiment of the Russian city;
St. Petersburg of the European city.
.............
The city is much smaller than Moscow. There a person wants to walk,

not run, although Muscovites don’t walk, they take cabs or the Metro
during the long winter. Muscovites accuse St. Petersburg of being depressing,
because the pace of life is too slow. This is partly because of the climate.
St. Petersburg lies much further north and the city is very wet and windy.
Muscovites often catch cold after visiting St. Petersburg.
The sun rarely warms the citizens of Petersburg, because of high humidity. 
Moscow is sunnier, and that’s why it seems smarter, than Petersburg.
But there is an eclecticism that is peculiar to Moscow. An antique building and
a glass skyscraper can be neighbors in Moscow, but not in St. Petersburg.
That’s why citizens of St. Petersburg say that the Muscovites don’t have

a sense of style, whilst Muscovites accuse St. Petersburg as being boring.