Church bells at Novgorod
Thanks for sticking around while I was on a blogging recession recently. Since its been over 14 months since I returned from Russia, these pictures are quite dated but I still intend to complete the Russia series and post interesting stories from my travels.
Stored outside the Cathedral of St. Sophia, built in 1052 AD in the little town of Veliky Novgorod (वेलीकी नोव्गोरोद), were a number of old Church bells. The massiveness of these bells struck with me and on touching them I felt a strange kind of buzzing, empty feeling.
All these bells have been decommissioned now, small and efficient electronic bells often taking over their jobs (I don’t know about this particular place), but perhaps one could imagine the glorious old days of Church’s rule when these bells occupied immense importance.
In my previous post, I wrote about the orchestra of bells at Orthodox Churches. Here in Novgorod, we were lucky to catch a little musical show at the bell tower. It seems an important part of tourist infrastructure, as you can buy tickets in advance and climb up the tower to see the orchestra in action.
I thought that these bells were huge, but they are dwarfs compared to the Tsar Bell in Moscow’s Kremlin, which is arguably world’s biggest bell.
Bell ringing in Eastern Orthodox Church (including Russian Orthodox) is complex, with particular bells being rung in particular ways to signify different parts of the services. Russian bells are usually fixed, and are tolled by pulling on a rope that is attached to the clapper so that it will strike the side of the bell. Very interesting to observe that.
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An idle one-street town on the outskirts of Moscow, Pereslavl Zalesskiy was the last orthodox religious center I visited…. by then I was stuck with church fatigue.
I had seen so many Russian churches, that I grew tired of them… they all start appearing the same after a while, don’t they? You get the same fatigue after spending a week visiting Bhutan’s Buddhist monasteries or Peru’s colonial churches. 
Purification church of Alexander Nevsky.
Pereslavl Zalesky town and a sign of faded communism.
‘AZS’ fuel station and a convent in background.
More churches… I was so bored that I didn’t bother to go inside any of them.
Small town Russia
Fishing in the still river.
“Здравствуйте!” (Zdravstvuyte झ्द्राव्सत्वुअीच, meaning “hello”). People greeted me, you know how it is in small towns, they wave and smile at you. It seemed that they don’t get many visitors, especially since it was a quaint settlement along the river. I was simply walking along the bank because I found it interesting. I was inviting curious stares too.
Quite quiet.
I want to go home
I waited for what seemed like ages at the bus terminal, waiting for my bus back to Moscow. The scheduled bus at 19:30 was cancelled and the next one was at 21:00. It was cold and dark outside. I was kinda worried to be stranded at that place at such a time – there was nobody to keep me company except a drunk man and a babushka who sat behind the ticket window. She looked grumpy on first look (like most Russians) but as soon as she heard my Russian, she got delighted and asked me to come inside her office. Her office had heating, tea and cookie, wonderful!
Look. If you are learning a foreign language, don’t learn it all the way. You get more points if you are seen to fumble with words yet attempting to talk.
Waiting for the bus… only 2 hours. The floor is clean only because it was cleaned 5 minutes ago.
Ticket and information window.
I reached Moscow at 23:30 – not a good time for an outsider to be on the streets. By the time I changed subways and went to the place I was staying at (other end of the city), it was past 00:30. I will be honest: I was shit scared. Every man looked like a criminal or a skinhead.
While I never had a problem myself, Moscow’s streets are not known for safety at night, especially when it concerns foreigners. There are shady characters, often drunk, and women are seldom seen. My safety index at night is directly proportional to the number of women on streets – I think its one of the most visible indicators of how safe a place is.
Factual information
Peresavl Zalessky is about 2.5 hours from Moscow and buses run few times a day from Shchyolkovsky (श्चयोल्कोव्स्की) terminal. Once you get to the town, you could walk to the interesting places, or take the only Marshrutka that runs down the road from city center to the bus terminal.
Not a highly recommended place unless you want you have a relaxed day walking through a sleepy town and visiting a church or two on the way.
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In an attempt to recreate the holy land, the New Jerusalem monastery was founded and populated in 17th century. The place is no longer in the limelight.
New Jerusalem Monastery.
Somewhere in 17th century, Nikon the patriarch decided to show one and all that Russia deserved to be the center of the Christian world. A site on the outskirts of Moscow was chosen to erect New Jerusalem for its resemblance to the Holy Land. The River Istra represents the River Jordan, and the buildings represent the ‘sacral space’ or holy places of Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem Monastery, also known as the Voskresensky Monastery (Russian: Новоиерусалимский монастырь / नोवोयेरुसालीम्सकी मोनासत्री), is a male monastery, located in the town of Istra in Moscow Oblast, Russia. They even built the Church of Holy Sepulchre.
The monastery is almost entirely undergoing repairs.
The monastery was shutdown in 1918 and came under attack from the retreating Germans. Only recently has it regained attention and restoration work was in progress when I went there.
Horse riders and rear wall of the monastery.
I saw many babushkas filling holy water from a tap. I also saw people riding horses and a dog barking at me. Then finally I saw a woodpecker and one more tourist (I think she was Italian) wielding a camera.
Since I was in Jerusalem, Israel, in late 2007 (my glorious travelogue with 20 chapters is here) and I toured the Christian sites extensively, I was very curious to visit this place. Unfortunately I couldn’t enter the monastery (it was closed for renovations), and overall it did not, even remotely, remind me of Jerusalem.
Woodpecker.
There is nothing (else) to do in Istra, it is a very characterless and bland suburb (or maybe that’s the character). There is one park with a model of an airplane. I did, however, buy lots of chocolates from here because there was a large chocolate store. People are not used to seeing foreigners, and definitely not used to hearing a foreign Russian accent.
Little pieces of cloth tied to trees as prayers.
Factual information
The New Jerusalem Monastery is a convenient half-day trip from Moscow. Suburban trains from Moscow’s Rizhsky vokzal (train terminal) stop at Istra (90 minutes journey). These trains are called Elektrichka (электричка / इलेक्त्रीच्का), which I think is a cute name.
From Istra rail station, a bus will take you to the church complex. Simply ask for a bus going to “Muzey (मुझीए)” (Museum) stop (15 minutes journey). Alternatively, do what I did: Walk to the monastery (so that you see the Moscow suburb intimately and call your walk a ‘pilgrimage’) and come back on a bus.
Istra train station.
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Orchestra of the Russian Orthodox Church Bells will blow your mind away
Little did we know,when we went to the Saviour Monastery of St. Euthymius, the largest monastery in Suzdal, that we would be listening to a mind blowing performance of orthodox church bells.
Sky filled with splendid colours.
Lets play some music!
Russian Orthodox bell ringing has a history starting from the baptism of Rus in 988 CE and plays an important role in the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Technically, bells in Russian tradition are rung exclusively by tolling (i.e, moving only the clapper so that it strikes the side of the bell) and never by pealing (swinging the entire bell until it sounds). For tolling bells a special complex system of ropes is developed and used individually for every belltower. All the ropes are gathered at approximately one point, where the bell-ringer (zvonar) stands. Some ropes (the smaller ones) are played by hand, the bigger ropes are played by foot. The major part of the ropes (usually – all ropes) are not actually pulled, but rather pressed. Since one end of every rope is fixed, and the ropes are kept in tension, a press or even a punch on a rope makes a clapper stike the side of its bell.
Set of bells in the orchestra. (picture from Novgodod’s monastery. It was too dark here.)
No melody is employed, as in the Western carillon, but rather a complicated polyrhythmical sequence of sounds is produced. The foundation of Orthodox bell ringing lies not in melody but in rhythm, with its intrinsic dynamic, and in the interaction of the timbres of various bells. These sequences have a very special harmony, since Russian bells (unlike Western European ones) are not tuned to a single note. Western bells usually have an octave between the loudest upper tone (“ring”) and the loudest lower tone (“hum”). Russian bells have a seventh between these sounds. Generally, a good Russian bell is tuned to produce a whole scale of sounds (up to several tens of them). This effect is accomplished both by the composition of the alloy from which the bell is cast and the sculpting of the sides of the bell in the mold.
Constructed based on information from
Wikipedia
Birds fly back to their nests, in orchestrated loops, as if applauding the performance.
The bell ceremony started precisely at 17:30 and I was caught unaware. I swear I stood under the bell tower looking up gawking at the spectacular show. When the music ended, maybe after 5 minutes, I released my breath (didn’t realize I was sortof holding it) and proceeded towards the exit, trembled on my path, still mesmerized by the music.
The main cathedral.
Finally, I leave you with an OK presentation of bell ringing from the monastery of Rostov (source)
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If you are unable to see the player above, here is the mp3 file: 2009-10-09_rostov-bells.mp3 (594 KB)
I will, soon, play and record some orthodox bell music on my Sitar.
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Suzdal town, old and rustic, protected from urbanization.
Suzdal (Суздаль / सुझ्दाल) is a historic small town near Vladimir, about 200 km from Moscow. It was once the capital of several Russian principalities and has many examples of early Russian architecture. I thought it was quite rustic, atypical town, later explained by the fact that this area falls under ‘limited development zone’ and construction projects are controlled. While one can see a little church or chapel in every corner of this town, there are two major ‘church complexes’ and the first one, Kremlin, is discussed here.
The Kremlin at Suzdal
Kremlin’s “skyline”: I don’t remember the details 
As explained before, Kremlin is the fortified power-center of a town and the Kremlin at Suzdal, a 1.4km earth rampart, encloses a handful of houses and a bunch of churches.
Nativity of the Virgin Cathedral: Blue domes spangled with gold.
During the time of the Soviet Union, nearly all of Suzdal’s economy was planned around its tourist potential. As a result, very few modern buildings were constructed in Suzdal. Also, a number of wooden structures from other parts of Russia were transported here, and the whole city was converted into an ‘open-air museum’. Unfortunately, Suzdal’s dependence on tourism also meant its economy nearly came to a standstill when tourists stopped coming after the fall of the USSR, only revived during recent years.
Wooden church of St. Nicholas.
Suzdal was probably the only place where I did not find any McDonalds restaurant! Neither did I see any visible signs of westernization such as glossy stores. “Livestock wandering the streets and elderly women washing cloths in the river (and tourists wielding digital cameras) are regular sights in Suzdal,” says Wikitravel.
Market on the plaza outside Kremlin.
The little market was getting ready to close and we were racing against time to reach the next religious complex in Suzdal – The Saviour Monastery of St. Euthymius (coming up next).
Market on the plaza outside Kremlin.
I’m sorry for the dull pictures, the weather was not at its best.
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Small, simple and off the religious highway makes this place my favorite among the Golden Cities.
The Church at Bogolyubovo, probably my favorite in Russia.
Away from crowded churches and cathedrals of the Golden Ring circuit is this little church in a little village of Bogolyubovo (Боголюбово / बोगोल्युबोवो). The church’s beauty lies in its simplicity, perfect symmetry, beautiful location (next to the river) and isolation (what a strange factor!).
The silence and the simplicity of this place is great!
It is said that this church was built during early days of Christianity in Russia, thus explaining pictures and carvings of birds and beasts on its walls and interiors. Interiors are even simpler and it is tempting to light a candle inside.
Elements from pre-Christian times incorporated in the architecture.
The hills, the birds, the water plus absence of cars, crowds and noise makes this place incredibly beautiful. During spring, the river floods the adjoining area, giving an illusion that the church is on an island. A single hut, habitated by the churchkeeper sells picture frames and lovely photographs of the church. There is also a ‘pay what you can’ toilet.
Factual information
Bogolyubovo can be reached by suburban trains from Moscow’s Kursky terminal (one station after Vladimir). Express trains from Moscow stop at Vladimir (2.5 hrs) from where there are regular buses to Bogolubovo. From the train / bus station, this church is about 1.3 km away, a pleasant walk through meadows. Infact, one can only walk to this church, making it feel somewhat like a pilgrimage.
Walkway. You can reach the church only on foot (or a horse, a bicycle), sortof a pilgrimage!
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