The Long Trip (in brief)

Because it was a very long trip, I can only briefly discuss each stop on the boat, but I'll try to hit all the highlights!

Our trip began at Mosckovskii Train Station.  We took an overnight sleeper train to Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fourth largest city.  After a rather uncomfortable night's sleep, we arrived in the city in the morning at immediately boarded a bus which would shuttle us about town. Our first stop was the apartment in which famed Soviet nuclear physicist turned peace activist Andrei Sakharov was detained in the later years of his life by the KGB.  Next we visited a settlement which showed early peasant life in the area and took a tour of the Kremlin.

We boarded the boat in the evening. The boat itself was a lot of fun. There, we would eat three meals a day, including a breakfast buffet (or "Swedish table" as they say in Russian) and multi-course lunches and dinners. After dinner, we could socialize in a number of boat bars (with boat-pricing) or sweat in the sauna. We all shared a cabin with one other person. The cabins were small, but comfortable, and had a shower with surprisingly strong water pressure.

The next city we would visit in Kazan, a rather unique city in Tartarstan, which is a semi-autonomous republic in Russia. The Tartars have a very strong independent culture and even their own language. The main religion is Islam. Unfortunately, the boat came across some fog in the morning and had to stand still for several hours, so we were very late to Kazan, only seeing it at night and for a couple hours. Nonetheless, we saw the very impressive Kremlin and walked along a pedestrian street. We were treated to a live band on the street and an impressive fire dancing show.

We then made off for Ulyanovsk, a somewhat smaller city that really still seemed to be stuck in Soviet Union in many ways. This makes some sense, since the city's only claim to fame is being the birthplace of Lenin. In fact, the city is still named for him (his last name was Ulyanov). Interestingly, Kerensky was also born there. We visited the house in which he grew up, which was a disappointingly boring, but I still get to say I've been in Lenin's house.

The next two cities were Samara and Saratov which have been somewhat blurred in my mind, not least of all bbecause of their similar names.  The highlight in one these two cities (can't remember which...) was Stalin's secret underground bunker. It was only declassified at the end of the Soviet Union. It had been built by hand in complete secrecy and even the next-door neighbors had no idea it was there.

The final city on the cruise was Volgrograd, formerly Stalingrad. Over 90% of the city was destroyed in one of the bloodiest battles of WWII.  The city is full of memorials to the fallen soldiers who gave their lives in the Great Heroic Struggle against Fascism. The grandest of all the memorials is the Mother Russia scultpture, a giant woman calling the Russians to battle against the Fascists.

From Volgograd we boarded a train to Moscow. Some stayed on an extra few days, but some friends and I, weary from the travel and conscious of how expensive Moscow is, decided to keep it short and sweet. We followed up seeing Lenin's birthplace with his final resting place. I'm not sure if it's really him or not, but it is definitely creepy. If it is in fact him, I suppose they're doing a good job of keeping a dead body preserved for nearly a century, but it doesn't necessarily look like a real person...  We also walked around the city and hung out a bit at the apartment of one of the Russian tutors who was on the boat.

At 1 am we boarded yet another train, and finally headed back to Peter. Anyone travelling to Russia should definitely consider one of these cruises. Russia is hard place to get around if you don't know the language. For that matter, it's hard if even if you do, with all the bureaucracy. On these tours you can really see a lot more of Russia than you otherwise ever could.