Travels in Russia: Veliky Novgorod and Staraya Russa

I am delighted to read from various comments posted on my website and in Contact letters to my email address that many readers enjoy and profit from my travel notes about visits to Petersburg and to the greater Northwest region of the Russian Federation. Some of you have expressed the wish to come and see for yourselves what life is like here ‘on the ground’ among the broad Russian population during the holiday season.

Let me be frank. There is no heaven on earth and travel everywhere in this world comes with irritations and disappointments as well as with positive discoveries and pleasures. So it is here. In my last ten days, I have stayed in one 4-star hotel where everything was terrific except the very spoiled ‘beautiful people’ guests (Park Inn, Radisson in Veliky Novgorod) and in a mineral water spa (Staraya Russa) offering Soviet style health treatment to the masses, where there are the occasional bad apple guests who spoil the barrel. To be sure, my overall impressions are positive and I do hope that my remarks here will prompt many of you to follow in my footsteps, but be forewarned that there are downsides too.

Both holiday destinations which I am about to describe would not have appeared on the package tours that foreign visitors to Russia purchased when there were still big tourist flows from Western Europe and the United States. Both are historic centers on their own merit that have been lovingly restored only in recent years from WWII devastation at the hands of German occupation forces.  This country is vast, the wounds of war were omnipresent and restoration was always prioritized for the capitals and best known tourist destinations. These two resorts are today in very presentable condition even as they are a work in progress. That remark pertains especially to Novgorod Veliky, where the most important attraction, a cluster of 11^th and 12^th century churches on the river bank across from the Kremlin side are now undergoing vast renovation that will be completed only in 2024. When they reopen, visitors will again have the possibility to marvel at frescoes of Feofan the Greek and other masters who brought and developed the art forms which originated in Byzantium. Nonetheless, there are sufficient sites open today in Novgorod to justify a visit. The icon museum in the Kremlin is one of the finest in Russia. As for Staraya Russa, the entire complex of the spa is fully modern and comfortable as is, while the historic monuments nearby are in perfect condition.

In the past, foreign visitors to Russia interested in visiting the historical and religious heritage of the country outside Moscow or Petersburg were necessarily sent to the Golden Triangle of cities in the near vicinity of Moscow and the Volga River which is the backbone of European Russia.

There is nothing wrong with that solution. But then to understand Russia’s past and ‘paths not taken’ it pays to visit Veliky Novgorod, which is approximately half-way between Moscow and Petersburg in the Northwest. Why do I say the ‘road not taken’? Because Novgorod Veliky was the cradle of democracy in Russia, a city which had an Athenian, or shall we say, Venetian style governance consisting of prince at the apex of authority and public assembly (veche) that decided key political issues. The princes were from the same Riurik dynasty as headed other medieval Russian cities. This unique arrangement lasted from the 12^th through 15^th centuries when Novgorod was conquered by Moscow forces and became just another province in a centralized realm headed by an autocratic tsar.

Novgorod in its heyday was the Russian entity that led the fight of the Rus’ against German crusaders from the West and against the Swedes from the North. Its greatest hero was Alexander Nevsky, a military commander who defeated the Germans in a wintertime battle on the frozen Chudskoye Lake which was part of the Novgorod territories. The German ‘tanks’ of the day were heavily armored knights on horseback, who, like the Leopards of today, were just too heavy for the battlefield and sank to their deaths. The mortal remains of Alexander Nevsky’s brother are believed to be miracle working and his coffin is on display in the Sophia church within the Kremlin.

In the present war context, Novgorod Veliky has a special resonance for Russian visitors to the city. The Saint Sophia cathedral church, by the way, is one of the earliest stone churches in all of Russia. Its interior space may be dimly lit, but the iconostasis is magnificent and in places one can see elements of frescoes dating from its earliest days. This church is smaller but historically as significant and closely dated with the Saint Sophia cathedral in Kiev that is considered the mother of Russian Orthodox churches.

Novgorod Veliky has a population of just over 220,000 and is not merely a tourist town.  It has a particularly strong food processing industry. I had my first introduction to that aspect of their economy when I discovered their jars of concentrated traditional Russian soups (solyanka, shchi) and stewed meats on sale in the little grocery in my dacha hamlet Orlino 80 km south of Petersburg. The city also produces high quality hard cheeses and a great variety of artisan-style traditional smoked lake and river fishes. These I see on display in the Staraya Russa spa commercial center and in a nearby small grocery that is filled with the aroma of the smoked fish.

The Park Inn hotel, Novgorod Veliky, which I mentioned above is a magnificent place to stay. True, it is a couple of kilometers from the city center. If you want to live just across the street from the ancient churches that are now being restored, the choice would be an elegant three star hotel called the Rakhmaninoff. However, for pure creature comfort the Park Inn has no peer in this town.  The rooms are very well appointed. The room price was the ruble equivalent of 100 euros for a double room with Scandinavian-Russian breakfast.

 The chef of the restaurant turns out excellent gourmet quality dishes.  The dining area is glass walled and from your seat you can see the shrub lined river banks that are just a couple of hundred meters away. If this all sounds heavenly, there is a problem: as I already noted, the problem is the upper class Russian clients who can be fairly obnoxious. Our dinner was spoiled by their brats, who instead of staying in the kiddy room were running around the tables and shouting. Round and round again. The moms, who were dressed for the Côte d’Azur could not have cared less. Their dads were probably back in Moscow doing some business deals. The hotel staff looked the other way.

On the positive side, the hotel has a heated indoor pool. Here, too, the problem was lack of management supervision, so that the several rowdy swimmers were not called to order.

But again on the positive side, when you walk from the hotel to the river, you find a splendid wooden path that takes you down to a boat landing from which several people were swimming in the river.

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When I told my high-living dental surgeon in Petersburg that I would be spending a week of vacation time in Staraya Russa, he said: “So you are going back to the USSR!”  It was not meant as a compliment.

Indeed, Staraya Russa is a modern, updated version of the sanitoriums that were widely present in the USSR, especially in the South of Russia and provided the Stakhanovites of the working classes with free of cost vacations under strict medical supervision. The objective was prophylactic medicine that would restore the physical force of those contributing most to national production.

Staraya Russa today is by no means free. But the daily charge of approximately 120 euros in ruble equivalent for a couple pays for a handsome and spacious room of 30 sq.m., for full board and a program of mud treatment, therapeutic massage, special baths and the use of an Aqua Center that features an Olympic sized swimming pool for adults and a large separate pool with water slides and similar amusements for children. Your schedule of treatments is established by a doctor on the day after arrival in accordance with your physical complaints. The establishment’s computer system ensures that your every scheduled treatment is known to the providers before your arrival for an appointment.

The grounds are extensive and you can hike 5 km a day very easily going from your room to the restaurant, to the “water gallery” where you take your cup of hot or cold water from the source before meals, to the several other buildings that offer treatments, and to the Aqua Center.  There is also a lake fed by the underground mineral springs, though the water temperature of just 17 degrees C is only for the very hardy.

The Staraya Russa spa can handle up to 1,000 guests at any given time. Because the facilities are spread out over a large terrain, you have no sense of the mass nature of the operation except in one critical place: the restaurant.   It has three sessions of 50 minutes each for each meal to spread the pressure on the facility. But nonetheless, the numbers of the diners, their less than aristocratic restraint when offered buffet meals on an ‘all you can eat’ basis, makes meal time stressful and at times simply unpleasant. When you watch someone ahead of you in line for the splendid ripe melons that are the most prized daily desert pile on the slices so high on his plate that some will surely fall off on the way back to his table, while leaving almost nothing for those immediately in front of you, then it is hard not to be muttering curses under your breath. As for the food, some of it is prepared exceedingly well, while meats and fish can be overcooked and dry, which is not the least unusual in catering on this scale anywhere.

Lest my remark about in-your-face gluttony be misunderstood as a rebuke to the Russian lower middle classes who make up a large part of the Staraya Russa clientele or to Russians as a people, I hasten to note that in my vacation stays on the Costa del Sol or the Canaries back in the 1980s, I saw exactly the same rudeness and selfishness displayed by guests from Western Europe, who not only grabbed as much as possible from the buffet line right from under your nose but even dared to take away food to their rooms. To avoid spoiling relations with any given nationality among my readers, I will not name names here. My point is simply that mass tourist operations can only offer buffet service and the end result can be disagreeable for diners seeking a relaxed ambiance.

A visitor’s experience to Staraya Russa should go beyond the spa and take in other attractions that the town has to offer coming down from its pre-Soviet history. The establishment dates back to 1828 when ‘taking the waters’ was a widespread pastime among European royalty and aristocracy. And where they led, others followed. In the case of Staraya Russa, the most famous visitor, then local resident for months at a time over the course of more than four years was the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. This was in the last and most productive period of his life, when he wrote Brothers Karamazov among other master works.

Dostoevsky’s rented apartment in downtown Petersburg, now a museum well worth visiting, is a modest affair. In his lifetime, the neighborhood was lower class, overcrowded and noisy. By contrast, the large wooden house he and his wife purchased in Staraya Russa near a slow moving river and with a large back yard is a perfect writer’s retreat. The rooms are spacious and the family could easily entertain friends in style.

The Dostoevsky house is now a state museum and well worth your time. I was surprised by the preservation of this wooden structure in such a perfect state given all the destruction that WWII brought to the region. A museum guide explained that the building had served as the German officers’ club during the war.

The town authorities have made available an audio guide and there are also organized walking tours of the Dostoevsky district.  In the immediate vicinity you find the Church of St. George and one other notable stone church dating from the 14^th century which have museum worthy icons on display.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023