Russia has much to offer to the intrepid traveler and one of the easier and most rewarding destinations is the area north east of Moscow. Here you will find several towns all blessed with many domed churches, cathedrals, and monasteries. Most of these places are still used today, including the monasteries. Don't expect any ruins or many museums. Only a few of these places are now mainly used as a tourist attraction. In the "working" churches, no photography is allowed and the Russians very strictly impose this ban. Now these churches are of particular interest to me as I prefer to capture people worshipping, rather than tourist dedicated churches where I normally found myself as the lonely tourist taking photos (100 rubles camera fee) of an empty church. Taking unauthorized photos in a working church is a great challenge because one has to respect the worshippers, yet I came here to capture people in their daily lives, which includes their worshipping.
Anyhow, start your trip in Moscow and then take the train to Vladimir which offers several domed churches and cathedrals, as well as at least one monastery. The best of the entire trip is a visit to Suzdal where it seems there are more domed churches than people. Skip Ivanova and do Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Rostov Veliky, and Pereslavl-Zalassky, Sergiev Posad.
Do brush up on your Russian (and more importantly your Cyrillic skills). Almost nobody speaks English, and Cyrillic is used almost exclusively. Without speaking some Russian, I think it will be a pain to travel this area as people generally just ignore your English. At one train ticket window the women responded to my English with "NO ENGLISH. ONLY RUSSIAN" and she looked like she wanted to attack me. Switching to broken Russian at least got some response from her. With all respect to our Russian brothers and sisters, most people I came across were not friendly or helpful. Forgive me for saying that I think they still suffer from the Soviet hangover. Even hotel staff (and I stayed in expensive hotels everywhere) could not care to smile. Oh, the only hotel staff that were friendly were those in the Moscow Leningradskaya Hilton.
I did come across some lovely Russian people who made my trip worth it. Lots to see and do in the area. While I am convinced that visiting in the cold (-15 to -28C ) is the best time to see this area (covered in snow), summers should be nice too as there are many hiking trails to smaller villages (with more domed churches).
My next trip to Russia will be to Siberia and to the far north east to visit the rugged Kamchatka Peninsula where many active volcanos are waiting to be explored by helicopter.
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