Peace and Beauty in Suzdal, a City of Churches

May 2017

We took the train to Vladimir early in the morning, and then the bus to Suzdal, the crown jewel of Russia’s Golden Ring cities. This involved rising early in the morning to get to the station, the chill morning air full of the day’s promise, walking and dragging our overnight bag on legs stiff with sleep. Everyone was sleepy at the station, the train full of half shut eyes and quiet acknowledgements. We put our bag on the rack and settled in across from a babushka and a man with an oval face in a sport shirt who glanced briefly at his phone before settling back with eyes closed for the trip.

The train pulled slowly out of Kurskaya Station under a dripping sky, rolling past a skyline of apartments with golden onion domes rising above and behind, piercing the dark gray sky. We rolled past brick warehouses and concrete barriers in brightly colored graffiti, and further out past the crumbling facades of old Soviet buildings. On the outskirts, we picked up speed, gently rolling side to side on the rails, the cabin still quiet in the morning, filled with sleepy and sleeping passengers who sat in uncomfortable positions on the stiff upright seats.

Outside the city, the hills were covered in the verdant colors of spring—a long time coming in Russia. The branches of the birch trees, drooped under the weight of wet leaves, hung like garlands and the fruit trees were bursting in brightly-colored flowers. The horn sounded for a crossing and the train continued down the track, past dachas set back in the trees behind sheet metal fences.

In Vladimir we disembarked and walked to the bus station. The temperatures had dropped further and we walked under a heavy sky. The gloom hovered over everything like a filter; the wind chilled the skin even through my light jacket. Following a short wait at the station, we boarded a short bus for Suzdal among a crowd of other foreign tourists and some Russians, most carrying small bags going to Suzdal only for the day. We huddled in our seats awaiting departure with the door open. The outside air at the station smelled strongly of exhaust.

But then we were off. The bus jerked suddenly between gears at the start before settling to a soft rumbling on the highway. A couple behind us read Russian signs to their young daughter and sounded excited about the simplest things: bread! ice cream! flowers! We made several stops along the way and the bus filled with passengers, but soon we were in Suzdal—at the bus station, at least, one mile out of town. The driver came around and explained that for 17 rubles more we could be dropped off in the town center. Most people agreed to pay.

In Suzdal, we were staying at a guesthouse just a couple blocks from Leninskaya Street, which was the main road. Our guesthouse was located on Engels Alley amongst an assortment of brightly-colored cottages with elaborately carved window frames. While the communist-themed street names endure, Suzdal is a different kind of Russian town, stuck in a time far earlier than the revolution.

Our host, Vladislav, met us at the door. He wore military fatigues with a smoothly shaved head and wide, ready smile, and spoke rapid-fire Russian. He showed us around to the back of his home where he had a well-tended yard with a small pond and garden. In the far back there was a small wooden cabin that contained the banya and next to this stood an open grill under a canopy.

The guest apartment on the second floor had floor-to-ceiling windows in the common room that looked out on the morning sunshine and a large wooden table with long benches for sitting. The rail along the landing was lined with an abundance of potted plants, a small-scale jungle that made the room feel alive. It was all very simple, but exceedingly comfortable, clean and well-kept; and Vladislav was very welcoming with his wide smile as he invited us to use the banya and made sure we had his number if we should need anything or wanted to order breakfast for the next morning.

We settled into our room to collect ourselves before heading out around the town and I read up on the many different churches and monasteries of Suzdal.

We walked to the center of town and stood on a bluff over the river behind Torgovaya Ploshad, the old arcade where there is still a market today full of stalls selling souvenirs and potatoes and local honey. Looking along a bend in the river, the town’s Kremlin was visible above a copse of trees, its onion domes dark blue and decorated with stars like the night sky, offset at the moment by bright cottony clouds in a sky lit by a resurgent sunshine.

Lawns around town grew thick with weeds and dandelions the size and shape of bushes. The croaks of bullfrogs echoed along the river bank as a family of ducklings floated past and a cold wind blew. We retired to a café to warm up and had weak cappuccino and mushroom soup and blini with apples and honey before setting off to explore more of the town.

We walked along the road down toward the Kremlin and climbed the old earthen ramparts, built up along the river for defense in the 11^th Century. From the top, we see a nice view down through town along the river. Suzdal is full of nice viewpoints; there are so many nice things to view.

We continued to the Kremlin and walked around the grounds, looking at the churches. None were open, so we were relegated to our wandering. But we admired the old churches. The main cathedral, the Nativity of the Virgin Cathedral, or Rozhdestvenskiy Sobor, was originally built in the 1220s, but only the lower levels are from that time. We could see the line where the original white stone met the brick used for reconstruction in the 1600s, and the carvings on the white pillars decorating the outer walls.

We wandered the grounds behind the cathedral which were thick with dandelions and thistles and laid down in the flowers under a bright sun with a line of fruit trees breaking the wind. Here was respite from the weather, and the church appeared beautiful towering above us, with the lawn a bright yellow carpet.

One the farther bank of the river, we passed an old woman selling pirozhkis from a baby carriage. She kept the pastries under a blanket to keep them warm. We passed old wooden churches and walked along a dirt track by a fence, past more of the colorful wooden cottages that dotted the town, and more old churches that were half in ruins. Not quite old or important enough to warrant keeping up, but beautiful in their own way, as certain building can be when left to rot. A pigeon cooed in an open bell tower window.

When we came back around we had worked up an appetite, but the old woman had already sold all her pirozhkis. She explained this to us with a shaming smile—we should have bought them when we had the chance—but lucky for us her daughter was there with her. They were seated together, and we followed her daughter to a second baby stroller on the other side of the road. She reached under the blanket and gave us two cabbage pirozhkis—the potato were all gone—and we walked away from there feeling like we had won the lottery. They were nice and greasy, the cabbage filling mixed with a chopped hard-boiled egg.

We headed down the road as we ate and, as we finished our pastries, into a strong wind up a bluff above the river. A much newer church had been built here and we were directly across from the Kremlin with a good view of the Rozhdestvenksiy Sobor across the water. In the other direction, across a low meadow, we could hear the shrieks of gulls in the distance at another bend in the river. The sun had been fighting the clouds all day, but it was a losing battle, and the wind howled in our ears. We felt alone to the world.

At this point, a man with a weathered face, thick lips, and tattoos on his hands approached us and asked for money. He had recently been in a car accident, he said, and something about children at home. We shook our heads uncomfortably, deciding it was time to leave. There was nobody else there on our bluff above the river, and there was something threatening about this man and the way he talked. The tattoos were likely from prison. We couldn’t know for sure, but listened to our instincts; and civilization suddenly seemed like a nice place to be, surrounded by wonderful crowds of people. We headed across the meadow with deliberate speed.

On the main square in the arcade, we found a young man selling, amongst his herbs and jars of honey, sbiten from a tall vacuum flask. Sbiten is a hot drink made from honey and spices—usually very good. Unfortunately, we seemed to have gotten the dregs from the bottom of the flask this day, but it was warm and we drank as much as we could stand while we sat on the steps of a side entrance to Voskrenskiy Tserkov, Resurrection Church.

The church dates only to the late 1600s, so very young by Suzdal standards. But for 50 rubles, we could enter a little side door near the entrance and climb the rickety wooden steps to the bell tower, all coated in dust and pigeon droppings, to a view of the trading arcades. We did this and carefully climbed the steps to look over the town as far as we could see.

The square below us was mostly empty on a cold, blustery day, but we could see past the square and down along the river and over the fields. We could see again the Rozhdestvesnskiy Sobor in one direction and the bell tower on Leninskaya street in the other—this now under renovation and covered in scaffolding. In every direction onion domes crowned the town in golds and dark blues and grays. The square below us was empty, but the churches stood as markers of permanence, sentinels of the town. They have been here longer than anybody.

From the arcades, we headed to the north of town. We had only one day in Suzdal and tried to see as much as we could, though there is a limit to the amount of churches one can appreciate in such a short span of time. We wanted to see the Monastery of St. Euthemius on the north side of town, which was built like a medieval fortress and formed the town’s northern defenses from the 14^th through 17^th centuries. There were some sample post cards of sites around town in our guest house and the churches of St. Euthemius with their green and golden domes had made an impression.

To enter the Monastery of St. Euthemius cost 400 rubles, about eight dollars a person, an all-inclusive ticket that included entry to all the kitschy museums on the grounds. We only wanted to enter the grounds and look around and balked at the price. Church fatigue was setting in.

Instead we walked around the fortifications to a high bluff over the river. Across the water, we looked down on the shining white walls of Pokrovskiy Monastir laid out perfectly in a wide field below behind a small grove of trees in full leaf, shining in the spring sunshine. The water of the river flowed gently past a narrow wooden bridge, the banks edged in yellow marsh grass. A few people cast rods for fish in the stream, or they were just passing the hours in their small town suspended in time, caught in another century when people lived without the distractions of smartphones and the 24-hour news cycle.

The sky cleared now, with wisps of soft white mist swimming in the deep blue and the sun shining through. We returned to our guest house to get cleaned up for dinner in a restaurant and I looked out the large bay windows at the neighbor’s flowering fruit trees, dressed in decorative white in the soft evening light. We went out to dinner and returned to sleep, and in the morning Vladislav served us an amazing breakfast with siyrniki, fried cheese fritters with homemade peach varenye, Russian jam which is really a syrup with sugared fruit and an herbal tea made with fresh greens from the garden, mint and something else we couldn’t place. Vladislav gave us a ride to the bus station and we rode back to Vladimir.

In Vladimir, we caught another bus, this time to Bogolyubovo. The sky threatened rain, and started dripping when we got off in town. We were in Bogolyubovo to visit yet another church, the Church of the Intercession of the Nerl, just outside of town across a large field. As we crossed the railroad tracks and could see the church, alone and unguarded in the distance, peaking out over a vast plain, the sky closed with dark clouds and the dripping rain became a full storm. The wind blew in gusts. We wore our raincoats, but our legs were soaked. There were people there less prepared than us, but they were all leaving, and still we had a long way to go to reach the church.

Thunder boomed nearby, but the rain quickly passed. This felt a fitting place to end our trip. The wind died down. We could see the church, bright white and standing tall with the dark storm clouds swirling behind. Some ways off in the distance lightning flashed. The church stood in a meadow with a small stream in front and dated to the 12^th Century, when the field probably looked much the same only without the powerlines cutting across, or the smokestacks of Vladimir off in the distance, or the sounds of cars on the nearby highway.

The setting is perfect for pictures where you can cut all those details out, you can frame the picture just so, with the church reflected in the stream and the storms clouds swirling behind. We took several pictures. And if you ignore the cars on the highway and close your eyes, you’ll hear the birds singing of springtime in the trees and the wind rustling the leaves.