Westworld Alberta

(clockwise from top left) St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow; the fi rst river lock on the sailing out of Moscow; a woman crafts beaded necklaces and bracelets on Kizhi Island; the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg; the Church of St. Dmitry on the Blood (left) and the Cathedral of the Transformation (right) in Uglich; inside the GUM department store in Moscow; a girl in traditional dress offers bread and salt as a welcome in Uglich; the remains of a village fl ooded as part of a reservoir project. uttered two notes when our group sits up, startled but thrilled by the black-tar richness of the bass singer's voice. Outside, the streetlights have come on. The watch store under the porticoes fi lls up with passengers from the Kirov, as does the vodka shop next door. Uglich is a good place to buy textiles and watches (it was once home to Chaika, the famous Soviet watch manufacturer). But it's the singing, the sound of bells and the smell of wood smoke at dusk that I will take away from this lovely old town, where I quite expect to meet Chekhov out for an evening stroll. The next morning, we arrive in Yaroslavl, a city of 591,000 that is home to the first theatre in the country. The highlight here is the Church of Elijah the Prophet, with its fres- coed interior, but I prefer the covered food market, with its vendors offering samples of saffron and local honey. Yaroslavl is also a centre for those magical black lacquer boxes. Mother Volga then makes her appearance – both the river and a statue of a woman in fl owing robes, on a bank near the delta. Later, a huge head pops up above a birch forest – a statue of Lenin, glowering at us over the trees. We go through another lock and sun- bathe on the deck, now taking for granted the procession of pretty Russian villages. But Russia doesn't allow anyone to luxu- riate in sun and beauty for long, and in the afternoon there's a history lecture. Our Rus- sian guides are funny and highly opinion- ated. That ethereally beautiful belfry sticking out of the water in the middle of the river? It is a testament, says Dmitri, today's lecturer, to the "blood and bones" upon which a par- ticular reservoir was built, and the village that was fl ooded to do it. In earlier times, he explains, the Volga would dry to a shallow stream in summer, until Stalin introduced the "Big Volga Plan" of 1932. Seven hundred villages were fl ooded. Families were forced to pack up and (river lock) Janette Griffi ths; (Kizhi woman/Uglich church) Steven Brydesen; (GUM) Alex Segre, (Hermitage) Greg Balfour Evans/All Canada Photos WESTWORLD >> NOVEMBER 2011 25

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