Day 10 Thursday

Uglich. We arrived early and opted to not take any tours. The city is small and we decided to walk it ourselves. We went to innumerable churches and two monasteries - one for men and one for women. There are many picturesque churches with many onion domes, some blue, some green, some gold. Each color has its significance. The number of domes also has its meaning. The oldest part of Uglich, the Kremlin, which actually means a complex of churches and fortifications, includes a lovely church of St. Dmitry on the Blood, which was built in the 1690 on the spot where 9 year old tsarevich Dmitry was killed. Uglich is a very picturesque and quaint little town of about 35,000. It has no industry apart from a watch manufacturing plant Chayka, cheese production and tourism. It’s a mixture of traditional wooden Russian houses, a few post-communist structures, new dachas some newly constructed hotels and apartment buildings. We were to meet Andrey, a choir director from Moscow with whom Bo worked recently on a grant proposal, at 10:30 but he was delayed by traffic and arranged for a local tour guide Galina to meet us and take us to the cultural center. We took a short taxi ride to a big structure on the bank of the Volga and were shown the performing space available there, which Andrey wants to use if the proposal gets funded. We were almost ready to board the ship when Andrey arrived with his wife so we were at least able to meet them and talk for a few minutes. Back on the ship – the usual activities. One of them has been particularly interesting – a series of lectures on Russian history done by our Russian guides. It was very illuminating to learn their perspective on the recent post-communist history especially. This extensive water way that we are on is not natural, that is why there are 7 locks. The piece today (Moscow canal) was hand dug in the 1950s by 200,000 political prisoners, half of whom died in the process.