Second routeVolga - Don
Volga - The Vein of Life in Russia. As we got out of the Volga - Baltic canal a completely new landscape opened up in front of us; the landscape of the Volga and its surroundings. Via the Volga we were going to sail through a water dam of 125kilometres. The charts showed a lot of church crosses spread all over. We did not understand what this really meant until we passed a church in the middle of the water. Apparently at the building of the dam the builders let the landscape get flooded, including all the houses and even churches. |
A church that we passed at a dam. |
The Volga begins somewhere at Moscow and travels all the way to the Caspian
Sea, so we had a choice; To the south = Moscow, to the east = Volga and
downstream waters. At the Volga, life was at spring with large traffic,
fertile grounds, villages with their included churches, passenger ferries
with tourists and Russia's history behind every corner. |
Station by the river where passenger ferries arrive. |
A so called Raketa which passed by us at a speed of 20-25 knots. | |
One of the areas we passed was called Kostroma, which is where the Ipatjevsky monastery is located. In 1610 an envoy came to this place and announced that the 16 year old Michail Romanov was to be the new Tsar. There was no successor to Ivan the Treble and his dynasty. The Romanov dynasty began here and was also the last. |
Ipatjevsky monastery in Kostroma |
. . . . . . . . . Campanions from Moscow.
One of the many churches we passed at the Volga. |
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The Fishers got mad. |
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Vladimir Uljanov - also known as Lenin. |
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Lenin museum
Liberty statue i Volgograd |
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After a week of sailing we finally arrived at Volgograd, the next milestone
in our journey. After Volgograd we had the river of Don and 18 more locks
ahead. Before the first Locking point in the Don river, we for the first time
met a more alert locking director. He asked us about our "Captain´s
certificate", to which Anjeliqa replied that we had forgotten it.
We had to show my sailing license and my foreign identity, a thing we
kept to our selves in previous locks. The director went very serious and
started asking about papers from the KGB. Anjeliqa tried to joke it off
by answering what "KGB"?? He mumbled as an answer and then asked
if she was sure I wasn't a spy. Anjeliqa answered that she wasn't sure
as she had caught me counting Lenin monuments several times, but that
director had nothing to worry about as I had lost count after a 100. The
director was pleased with the answers, and to change subject he started
instructing us on how to lock, even though we had passed 25 locks before
and more than half of Russia. Finally we could proceed in Don without
any trouble. |