My trip to the Russian White Sea region
Solovetsky, Sora, Pinega, Arkhangelsk

"Our trips aren't for those who mainly want comfort and recreation."

Well, that sounds like a good precondition for the trip, doesn't it? At least it did to me, and the trip wasn't uncomfortable at all, and my expectation of getting to meet people in villages in the Russian countryside was fulfilled.

My Russian vacation began in S:t Petersburg, from where we took a train to Arkhangelsk. This part of the journey took 27 hours and included 2 partial nights in a sleeper compartment. I found the train comfortable and it had a good restaurant car. It was just that the train left at 0120 which was a bit too late for my taste.

The scenery was pretty much like home in Sweden, with maybe more trees and flatter. This impression was confirmed later on.

We arrived in Arkhangelsk pretty early, but in spite of that, Anna, our guide, had managed to arrange a visit to the private literature museum, including an early breakfast.

The manager told us about it, and the other Anna, the project manager who accompanied us because this was a "pioneer tour", translated for us.

This museum is only concerned with local authors, of which there are important ones, or authors who have had something to do with the Arkhangelsk region.

A bit later in the day, we visited the architectural museum just outside the city, where is collected older houses from different parts of the region.

The museum guide (second from the right in the photo, "our" guide Anna is the far right) told us about the buildings.

In the afternoon, it was time to fly to the Solovetsky islands. We flew from regional airport, in a chartered aircraft which they didn't fuel until we arrived.

This is what take off sounded like.

The flight took about an hour, and it wasn't only over water, so there was something to look at. Mostly a flat landscape with meandering rivers. The photo at the right shows the first we saw of the islands.

The airport we landed at didn't have a concrete runway, it was steel matting, but felt OK anyway.

The terminal building wasn't very large. My first impression of the island was that it was windy. No surprise, really.

We stayed in a small hotel which consists of a few red painted buildings, much like home
The landscape also looked much like home, and the sounds in the morning also were like a Swedish summer.

Much like home, but also things not at all like home.
Like the abandoned prison right next to the hotel.

The Solovetsky islands were a major part of the GULAG system, and after that a prison colony.

After breakfast the second day, we went on a guided trip to look at the sights, which on Solovetsky are mainly connected with the monastery and the prison camp era.
The buildings, which aren't just the main monastery, but also annexes in other parts of the islands, have usually been used for both purposes.

The guide, who have written a treatise on the GULAG, here tells us about the botanical garden.

The weather wasn't all that good, and I found out that Windstopper also stops mosquitos, which was a good thing.

The monastery itself, which was burned in the 1920s, just as there were instituted a prison camp on the islands, is now being restored. On our guided tour through it, we got to hear from the monastery guide about the dining hall.

There is also a museum in one of the buildings, which tells about the islands' history. That's were I bought my first souvenir from the trip, a set of 10 postcards for 15 roubles. (Cheap, for us tourists, like most things.)

The main church of the monastery isn't restored yet (one of the rooms in it contained 2000 prisoners during the prison era), but a smaller one is, and it's in use, as we could hear from the bells. The next day we visited a mass.

In Solovetsky, the main settlement on the islands which is named like the island, a little more than 1000 people now live. (I think there were something like 80000 prisoners on the islands during the GULAG era.)

In one of the shops in Solovetsky, we bought some food. Like in most shops wherever we went, it was no trouble getting what you wanted, like cookies, bread, chocolate, bananas and other things you might like for lunch when it couldn't be arranged some other way. The only thing you couldn't get in some remote places was bottled water. But on the other hand, there it wasn't really necessary.

From Solovetsky we flew back to Arkhangelsk, where we took a chartered helicopter on a 1 hour flight, so one got used to the sound, to the village Sora, which is situated where the Pinega and Sora rivers confluence.

The thing to the left in the cabin is the fuel tank.

When we landed, there was a small crowd to meet us. Most there hadn't met foreigners before, I think, but helicopters aren't that unusual.

The "village" I'd rather term something a bit larger, as there are more than 2000 persons living there. Whereever "there" is, as this "village" would by many of us rather be thought of as several villages, up to 5 km from the one in the middle. But that's not how the locals see it.

This was a bit unpractical, as we in the group were staying with different families spread out over a distance of 10 km or more.

I stayed at an old woman's house, I first thought, but it turned out to be her and her husband's house (shared with another family), only they didn't live in it but 5 km away where their cow(s) were.

Before she left in the evening, to take care of the cow(s), we got a good instruction on how to use the banja (sauna), fortunately with an interpreter.

The rest of the time it was a bit hard understand what was to happen, but we were guided round the village centre anyway, by one of her friends. What some of the things we were shown were we had to guess, but we understood that some things had with Johannes of Kronstadt to do, as he were born in Sora.

We also visited the village's improvised church, in an ordinary building, while the old one is refurbished.

After the tour we had dinner: Potatoes, smetana and salt cucumber. Later on tea, made in a real samovar, which was unusal, as it was rather hot weather, so an electrical one is more comfortable to use and there weren't may hours per day without electrical power, with pirogs. We got good food and lots of it, sometimes almost too much, during all the stay in the villages.

Next day, we started with visiting the school, which as it was in the middle of the summer wasn't used as a school, but was for lots of children on some kind of summer camp.

It was popular with foreign visitors, and the children tried to talk to us. They spoke a little German and a little English. Many of them wanted us to write autographs.

The afternoon, and some of the evening (not much difference this far north in the summer, as even though there's no proper midnight sun, in practice it makes no difference as there's almost full daylight all night anyway) we walked to the southern part of the village. We brought with us a horse and a cart for our bags and for those who wanted to rest their feet a bit.

One of the things planned for this excursion was that our guide wanted to diver for blue clay in the river, which she usually does in order to bring it back to Sweden.

I really don't understand what's different with this clay compared to others.

My vacation in Russia, part 2 (of 2)

This document last updated 2000 Aug 08 by Urban