Suzdal (Golden Ring)

Arriving at the train station in Moscow I find, after asking around, the right platform. When the train arrives in the direction of Vladimir people want to get out while others want to make their way in. Some starts to push and pull others and nobody gives way. Next to me I keep a spot for my little Indian friend (which I just met on the platform) who seems to come from Bombay and these weeks have to travel through Russia for business.

Not easy for a foreigner especially not when he’s coloured. It is another electric train with wooden benches and a fixed person who starts to check all the tickets. I look outside the window when the rain is pooring down. We pass a lot of forest with here and there a little village or factory. It is 11:50 when we get off in Vladimir.

I buy a bus ticket and the tickets seem to be sold by controllers when you sit already in the bus and I have place 0. Apparently I have to stand! The van is packed and I hear some tourists behind me when we drive to Suzdal. A beautiful red curtain hangs in front of the window totally blocking my view. The trip takes one hour.

We stop at a very modern bus station outside the city and the driver makes it clear that he is going to the center but that you have to pay 6 Rubles extra. I pay the extra amount. Ten minutes later I get out in the center of Suzdal, no idea where I'm going to sleep tonight. In my travel guide there was a whole story about the fact that you actually have to sleep in a gostevoy Dom, the only affordable place here.

I cross the river and come into a residential area with a monastery where many old wooden houses stand and lada cars in front of the doors and gates. At the first two (guest) houses, I am shocked about the prices they dare to ask. At the one in the guide, after a time-long wait, a very old female finally comes to the gate - I do not know what she is saying, of course, but it seems that she is full or does not want Western tourists in her hostel.

Maybe she triest o say she’s not a hostel anymore. Fact is that I can not stay there, that's clear. In the third, it is shockingly expensive and at my fourth option it is full. However, this woman runs to another beautiful blue wooden house and rings at the door. Here suppose to be still space and first I have to take my shoes off. The woman shows me a ballroom with three beds. For this very spacy room she’s asking 1500 Rubles, about 30 euros. I ask if she does not have a smaller room because I’m just alone. Ofcourse she’s got one available and show’s me a single room. A nice room and shé’s asking 500 Rubles which is fine with me.

She happily agrees - perhaps because I say that I paid less in Moscow the days before or that I’ve said I want to stay at least two nights. If I’m paying I’m asking if maybe a little breakfast is included and she’s agreeing.

After I checked in I pack my daypack and walk outside. At the end of the street I walk where a small pedestrian bridge leads over the river to the outer walls of the largest monastery in Suzdal; the monastery of the savior of Saint Euthymius.

Beautiful large red brick towers decorated with wood and a long wall and then the entrance to the monastery. You can visit all buildings of the monastery separately or buy an all-inn ticket, but the prices are considerable - I decide to buy a ticket only for the grounds of the monastery. There is a large courtyard garden where, even in the old days, fruit and vegetables were grown - safely behind the high walls.

It is a city in a city; there is a prison, a hospital and countless churches within the grounds. I walk past a group of women who perform a traditional dance, sing and of course are dressed in medieval clothing. I walk to the other exit and enjoy in the main street of the city in the Golden Ring of the beautiful dilapidated old wooden houses that are painted in various colors and have beautiful windowframes. It is always searching for what a store is in Russia - you never know what you find inside.

If you think it is a sandwich shop, you will enter a strip tent, if you think you will visit the Historical Museum you are in the middle of an open-plan office where everyone looks at you in a very weird way what in the hell you’re doing there. In in the end I find the supermarket and walk back to my guest house.

The next day I walk the same way back as I walked to the hostel yesterday, but I walk a lot more relaxed and lighter. On Torgovaya there are countless elderly women (babushka's) and males selling their stuff on a stone wall. I see honey, flowers, onions, strawberries, cherries, garlic, potatoes and much more - everything in small quantities.

Maybe they used to sit between and under the arches that the white building has on the other side, but now there are modern shops under an arcade. A bit of a shame. I walk a bit further where I see more wooden houses and lada's and then turn towards the Kremlin of Suzdal. I walk up the old ramparts of the fortified section and have a beautiful view of the inner garden with an old wooden church (which has been moved here) and of course the beautiful "Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary" with its implausible blue onion cupolas adorned with golden stars. 

On the other side of the museum I look at the board behind the window - you can buy tickets for the individual sights again or buy an all-inn ticket. I decide to buy a ticket for the church only and pay the 80 rubles entrance fee. The church is beautifully decorated - built in 1220 but probably completely renovated and rebuilt during the Middle Ages it remains an impressive whole. An altar completely covered in gold, candle holders and other Biblical sights. The biblical frescoes are painted in bright blue colors and are applied between the 13th and 16th and are beautiful.

The monks give a mini-concert which gives me the opportunity to take pictures of the whole church without tour groups who drive into the city and sights with great numbers. While I listen to these Russian monks from the Orthodox Church, my mind wanders about the band members of the band "Pussy Riot" who have been in prison for months because they performed in a church and targeted President Seated "Putin". I walk around the Kremlin site for a while and do some shopping on the way back to the hostel.