A LARGE ICE BREAKING SHIP FROM THE
RUSSIAN NAVY CAME TO OUR RESCUE
We returned to the ship at about 5PM that May 4, 2011. Dinner, as expected was ready at 7:30 PM and, as always, the crew babied us in the dinning room. That night, the temperatures started to drop below 35 degrees Fahrenheit as we continued our navigation thru the Volga River Waterways. In spite of the cold temperatures, I continued to make my daily walk on the peripheral platform in the third deck, a circuit of about 300 yards which I walked 25 times for a total walk of about four miles. This was good to help me keep my physical fitness and my weight as well. Soon I was able to get Celso Santacruz and Fernando Rivera in a walking mood too, but as soon as the temperatures dropped, Celso preferred to stay in bed, while Fernando continued to walk. Carol Morales preferred to play Canasta with the ladies until late in the night.
After the night walk and a good shower we went upstairs to the third deck and enjoyed the music (sometimes folk music) in the Kostroma bar until eleven (ish), or watched a movie in the conference hall. One night we were able to watch the beautiful movie Dr Zhivago, starred by Omar Shariff and based on the book by the same name, written by Boris Pasternak, a Novel Price laureate author who was, himself, a victim of political persecution by the Soviet Government because he wrote about many of the crimes committed by the communists during and after the Bolshevik revolution.
THE KIRILLO BELOZERSKI
MONASTERY NEAR THE VOLGA
We were going to navigate the whole night and part of the Following day so as to arrive at about one PM in the small town of Goritsy, to visit the historic Kirillo-Bellozersky Monastery and what is left of the Nunnery of the Resurrection, two very important sites in the long and tragic history of Russia, in which Ivan The Terrible played a very important role. Ivan´s importance in the history of Russia is such, that we haven´t visited yet one single place in our tour of Russia, in which history this tsar hadn´t had an important participation. In many ways, he is the founder of Russia.
It was here that Ivan sent in exile and obligated to take the habit of a nun, to his arch enemy, the princess Yesofrinya Staritskaya, mother of Vladimir Staritsky, of whom Ivan suspected as his throne´s pretender. Maria Nagaya (the mother of St Dmitry), Ivan´s wife also came to take refuge from Ivan´s enemies in the same nunnery.
The Monastery was founded in 1397 by Kirill, a monk, disciple of St Sergio of Radonezh, who was one of the most distinguished Russian writers of the middle ages. Kirill became the first Superior of this Monastery and was canonized in the XV century.
THE KIRILLO BELLOZERSKY MONASTERY
The Monastery of Kirillo –Bellozersky was a very important military outpost for the Muscovite Princess and for the Orthodox Church. It is located strategically in a point in which softly undulating hills beautifully combine with the surrounding forests and the serenity of the waters in the nearby lake, to make it a religious, military, cultural, artistic and historic center of medieval Russia. Among the most important historical buildings of this place are: the Cathedral of the Assumption, built in 1497, the church of St Vladimir (1554) and the church of St Kirill Bellozersky (1780). Russian History says that Peter the Great, the most powerful of all Russian tsars visited this place in 1690 and fell in love with the place.
In the Soviet´s times, this Monastery was abandoned and was then destroyed by time; however, after the fall of the Soviets in 1989, the new Russian government started a program of reconstruction which will be concluded in a few years with help from the United Nations Fund for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO)
We concluded our visit of this cultural and historical place at about 5 PM and turned back to our ship and got ready to navigate three consecutive days without stop until we reached St Petersburg, the final destination of this River Cruise. By this time, after four days of continuous navigation through the Volga waterways, we began to feel a bit of nostalgia for the solid land, however, the Leo Tolstoy’s crew was firmly committed to make us feel good through many of the amenities they had for that purpose, such as artistic shows, musical shows, conferences on Russian History, language classes, movies, and even with classes from a magician. We attended many of those things with different degrees of enjoyment. It was a nice way to kill the time while cruising the Volga Waterways in our way to St Petersburg.
THE MONASTERY COMPOUNDS
THIS IS HOW THE FROZEN WATERS OF
THE LAKE LOOKED LIKE
But, what really woke up our attention at full, with even a certain degree of fear, was the announcement through the internal speakers, the night of May 6, that the ship had to come to a full stop in the middle of the Onega Lake, due to the thick ice on the surface of the lake. The captain himself announced that we were forced to stop as the ship could not continue navigating under those conditions, and that we would have to wait until an ice breaking ship belonging to the Russian Navy would come to open up the way to continue in our cruise to Lake Ladoga and then to St Petersburg.
Even before the Captain´s announcement, those of us who ventured to look outside the ship had already noticed black ice spots as we navigated, but we did not pay much attention to them until it was official that we were unable to continue navigating. At that point, we were only a few hundred miles from the Arctic Sea and the North Pole, and a couple of dozen miles from the nearest land spot. The women in our group did not show signs of concern, either because they did not know what was going on outside the vessel, or, because they were so concentrated in their Canasta game that they hadn´t figured out the degree of risk we were under.
For several hours our ship was standing still in the middle of the lake, fortunately, the crew managed the situation with such skill, that they avoided even the minimum show of panic from the passengers, as they probably knew very well that panic can expand as fast or faster than fire in a haystack.
THE ICE BREKING SHIP LEADS THE WAY TO
SIX SHIPS GOING IN CONVOY BEHIND IT
Several hours after the first announcement, we were in fact informed that an Ice braking ship from the Russian Navy was approaching the site were our ship was standing still, and that in a few moments it would start leading us into our way out of our compromised position. In about thirty minutes, in fact, a six ship convoy, of which ours was the last ship, started moving behind the big and powerful ship that was opening our way.
It was about eleven in the evening of that Friday May 6 and we, the passengers of the Leo Tolstoy began looking onto the horizon, the Northern Sun was still illuminating the lake in which we were navigating. It was almost the midnight sun of which we had only heard or read about before this day. We took many photos of this memorable moment.
It was amazing to see how modern technology came to our rescue at a very moment when we were at a high risk. Only fifty years ago, a situation like this could have turned out to be fatal in these Volga River waterways. In fact, only a few weeks after our voyage, at the beginning of the month of July, a vessel about two thirds the size of the ship we had been navigating, was unable to get out of an icy spot and sank in the same waters of the Onega Lake. A toll of 149 lives was the end result. Scary!
FROZEN WATERS ONLY A MONTH AFTER
WE NAVIGATED THIS SAME WATERS
After these frightening moments and when the calm returned to the occupants of the ship, our Group, “The Ecuador Group” began to rehearse for the “Talent Show” to take place at 9:15 PM in the Kostroma Bar, the night of May 7, before our landing in St Petersburg on May 8. Whether we, the men in our group admit it or not, the fact of the matter is that the women in the group had decided that we would participate in the Talent Show, dancing the old fashioned but always nice to dance merengue “What is it that the Young Negro Wants?” (Qué es lo que quiere el Negro?), a song that was in full fashion back in the early 80’s and which, of course we had danced many times about thirty five years ago, when we were much younger.
The rehearsal sessions began immediately at the Conference Room, in the third floor, not far from the rear of the ship. The women in our group, and Fanny, my wife in particular, tried many times (without luck) through repetition after repetition of the music, to have our lazy feet “enter into the rhythm” of the song. Our clumsy, awkward, stupid, dull movements did not resemble anything that could be called “rhythmic” or something that could give the sensation of a half acceptable coordinated dance to the eyes of a large audience made up mostly by experienced American tourists.
.
FERNANDO DOMINICI AND VICKY, HIS WIFE
WITNESSED OUR DANCING REHEARSALS
Fernando Dominici and his wife Vicky (both Cuban born and Spanish Speaking), our tour companions, had been witnessing our ever more futile efforts to dance rhythmically and laughed their hearts out throughout our rehearsal, and decided to get the whole thing on a film. While filming, Fernando, a guy with a tremendous sense of humor, did not miss a moment to make sarcastic comments about our poor artistic abilities while keeping his laughing in crescendo. As we all heard his comments we couldn´t help but laugh ourselves at our little (if any) ability to make two coordinated steps. It was pathetic; we couldn’t stop laughing while we kept on trying to improve our dancing, but our laughter made our dancing even worse. It was a vicious circle, the more we laughed, the worse we danced and vice versa. We, the men in the group had proved to anybody´s satisfaction that the art of dancing was simply not part of our stock of personal talents, period.
Our impeccably uncoordinated dancing movements fueled the satiric firings of Fernando´s comments and his laughter, which in turn provoked his wife´s laughter and then, of course, ours. It was like an unstoppable carrousel of laughter even long after the music had silenced and our intended dancing was over. It was like attending the clumsiest clowns show in a second class circus, only the clowns were ourselves!
I believe this was one of the highest points of our experience as a group, and a testimony that there isn´t a more genuine laughter than that which points out to our own personal weaknesses. We really laughed our hearts out at our complete inability to make two coordinated dancing steps as a group and produce something that would have been acceptable to be presented to a respectable audience. We have a copy of Fernando’s film, which with our loud laughter, attests to the fact that, by far, we are better judges than dancers
TEN LATINO FRIENDS IN RUSSIA-
After two days of rehearsals during which there were no signs of improvement, I started to pray to God for His help to avoid that we come in front of such a select audience and show our total lack of ability to dance together. True, there are occasions in our lives in which one has to do things forgetting about the embarrassment they might cause on ourselves, but doing something that would embarrass you and your group altogether in front of a large audience which deserves our full respect, is another thing. What we were going to show, was simply above any acceptable level of tolerance. It would have been really embarrasing.
Just as it has happened in similar occasions in my life, my prayers had been heard. On the night of the show, and only about one hour before it took place, Silvita Santacruz, the youngest in our group, had a nervous breakdown and we had to take her to the emergency room where they gave her a couple of shuts to calm her down. In fact, the doctor made her go to sleep.
Yelena Volinskaya, our tour guide, Mercedes Rivera and I, took Silvita to the doctor and stayed with her until the medical emergency was over, by then, it was almost time for the Talent Show. The emergency took its tall within the group, everybody was confused and worried, and as a result, we had to request Yelena to have us excused from our participation in the Talent Show for reasons she knew were not in our control. For heavens sake, my prayers had been heard, the miracle had been done and our prestige (if any) as artists and dancers was intact!
During the Talent Show that night, many of our colleagues in the tour participated; some singing, some telling jokes, some playing musical instruments, others reciting, etc. All of them were talented people; no doubt, all of them knew how to act in front of a large audience such as the one that filled the Kostroma bar in the Leo Tolstoy.
In my next chapter: ST PETERSBURG – THE BEAUTIFUL
