Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka (21 August): Observations

Avacha Bay. Jumping over a volcano and a brother!

21 August

Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, Russia

Some gleanings from the report of George Kennan, Tent Life in Siberia, originally published in 1870, remain true to this day. A couple choice quotations:

The sights of Petropavlovsk, speaking after the manner of toursits, are few and uninteresting. It has two monuments erected to the meory of the distinguished navigators Bering and La Perouse, and there are traces on irs hills of the fortifications built during the Crimean War to repel the attack of the allied French and English squadrons; but aside from these, the town can boast of no objects or places of historical interest.

The kids will add to this list an abundance of ocean-smoothed glass available to sharp-eyed young tourists.

What the ancestors of the Russians did at the Tower of Babel to have been afflicted with such a complicated, contorted, mixed up, utterly incomprehensible language, I can hardly conjecture. I have thought sometimes that they must have built their side of the Tower higher than any of the other tribes, and have been punished for their sinful industry with this jargon of unintelligible sounds, which no man could possibly hope to understand before he became so old and inform that he could never work on another tower. However they came by it, it is certainly a thorn in the flesh to all travellers in the Russian Empire.

 

Language has not been our strong suit. We’re always grateful to come across one of the minority of Russians who speaks English. In this respect Russia is like China. I have no doubt that there are many English speakers, but they are diluted amidst the general population. In a place like Vietnam or Mongolia, it felt like a lot more people spoke English, particularly in the hospitality industry.

One of these rare English-speaking birds was an attendant at the log-cabin orthodox church downtown. She exuded warmth and gave Gracie candles to make an offering at the wooden Jesus.

In Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk, log cabin architecture was all the rage -- some kind of homage to nineteenth century Russian frontiersman ship. In Petropavlovsk, the only things log cabin were these churches and, as far as we could tell all orthodox churches were built from the same set of lincoln logs. I make light of it, but actually it's really cool. Unpretentious. Practical. Non-concrete.