Nizhny Novgorod

A seven hour train journey stretching into the evening was exactly what I needed to recover from the shock of the supposed mugging attempt I’d experienced earlier in Moscow. I stretched out, relaxed and tried to move my mind on from the incident, looking forward to being out of the behemoth and arriving at the smaller city of Nizhny Novgorod, one of Moscow’s historic “Golden Ring” cities and still known to many by its Soviet-era name of Gorky (named after the writer Maxim Gorky, who was born there).

Arriving very late into town, I picked my way through the dark, empty streets, more wary than usual after my little brush with crime, until I reached the hotel I had earmarked, a souless business hotel close to the railway station complete with fruit machines lining the lobby. I was disappointed to find the published room rate was three times that quoted in my guidebook; it was a rip-off. The miserable receptionist, who thankfully spoke a little English, wasn’t budging with the rate, and after watching a Russian chap check in late and pay the full whack, I accepted that they weren’t trying to con me just because I was foreign, and painfully handed over the rubli for a room. It wasn’t quite worth the money I paid for it, but it was a close call; I had underestimated the value of a warm, dry place with a proper, non-moving bed, hot shower, with facilities to wash and dry my clothes and put my feet up to watch telly after days of dorms and trains, and I awoke the next day refreshed and more relaxed.

Checking out, I traipsed through the snow past the statue of Lenin situated outside the hotel across the long bridge spanning the frozen Oka river into the heart of Nizhny Novgorod. The bleak styling of the Soviet period contrasted with a brightly-coloured orthodox church I passed. It hit home that I was an independent tourist now deep into distinctly non-tourist Russia, and things would not be getting any easier any time soon. Thankfully, with practice I had finally mastered reading the Cyrillic alphabet, even doing so now without moving my lips, and I had a whole repertoire of suitably apologetic phrases on tap to explain my nationality and inability to speak Russian. Being able to read signs freely made the world in which I roamed less alien. But without a doubt, mild culture shock was setting in.

Picking my way through the snow, I made my first port of call the Kremlin. Before I’d started reading up on Russia I had assumed there was only one Kremlin, the structure in Moscow; but it turns out Kremlin is a more general Russian term meaning a walled fortress, and most major cities had such a thing. Inside the early 16th century walls were a number of examples of Second World War military hardware. There seemed to be a lot of army bods about, and I got the impression it doubled up as some sort of army HQ. Wandering the grounds, I came across a War Memorial with an “eternal flame” burning, and rather oddly saw no less than four wedding couples having their pictures taken within the grounds. Apparently the Bangles-esque eternal flame was good luck to visit. Rather them than me on a baltic winter day like this, I thought; it gave a whole new meaning to “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue“.

I had really taken to Nizhny Novogorod. Its charming imperial centre had a long pedestrian district of shops within old buildings, lined with ornate lamps and dotted with statues. It was a relaxed and affluent place.

My cultured-shocked mind was glad to discover there was a so-called English pub off one of the sidestreets of the shopping district, and I made a beeline for it for one of the best plates of fish and chips this side of Blackpool, and cracking the laptop out, I managed to get a good bit of work done too before it was time to traipse back over the bridge to the train station to admire its all-seeing Soviet wall mural and await my next overnight train deeper into Siberia.