Preface to this Russian Posting    Good stories grow and expand, and as they do, I find them more and more fun. After the previous posting covering most of the mini-collection, we have just two Russian rail bonds to discuss. Rather than squeezing them into the last posting, I decided to keep them separate. They're the two oldest pieces I have, from 1869 and 1890. As a matter of fact, the only other 19C piece I have is the share of stock from the Seine Maritime Company, which, with a date of 1899, just barely makes it.

I don't see how you can tell the backstories of the Russian pieces, which cover the second and third rail ventures in Russia, without telling about the first one (of which I have NO certificates), whose tsarist story is at least as good, and possibly even better. Once you get into that, you're talking about Saint Petersburg and the summer palaces out in the countryside. If you're doing that, you have to talk about the rail stations involved, both in the countryside and in the city, and once you go that far, with Moscow also involved in the second rail venture, why not toss in the Moscow rail stations? We did that quite successfully with Paris in the last posting, so why not do two more cities?

The bulk of this will not be a narrative of any trip (although in the end, we'll do a narrative about 2005). Some places, notably Pavlovsk, I've never even been to, and some of the others are now only vague memories (nice ones, but vague—could another trip be in order?). I don't plan including many in-depth pictures of beautiful places, since this is a rail-centric story, blended in with the tsarist mentality of the mid 19C.

We'll also discuss a bit about language, both in general and specifically about Russian, just to make names glide by more smoothly. And to that point, I have to discuss weaknesses and strengths. When we recently discussed La Goulue and Paris rail, the only way to get the most complete information was to go to where the most complete information is, and that's in French. I also did that in some of the other languages, as needed. Researching the present topics, I needed to do research in Russian, mostly in Russian Wikipedia (Википедия / Vikipediya). My weakness is that, I can manage simple sentences, but not lengthy paragraphs in Russian. So I yielded and copied information into Google Translate. What comes out is garbled, of course, and you really have to look back at the original Russian to help you understand the wishy-washy "translation". But I succeeded in particular in figuring out the answers to two issues that weren't spoken to anywhere else. I'm happy about that, and will point out the matters as we get to them. But I'm even happier about a certain strength that came to the fore. I found a picture of an important plaque in Russian, just as we'd had one on the Musée d'Orsay in French, and I managed to translate it, having to look up only one word. To boot, I found a typo in the Russian on the plaque. I'll also point this out at the time.

I said I have some weak, and some very strong, memories of the places we'll be discussing, and have not been to all places. I will make clear which are which during the discussion. But so that we're all on the same page, I should give a brief summary of my two trips to Russia.

The one dimmer in memory was when Beverly and I drove to the Soviet Union in our little blue VW Beetle out of Vienna. It was in the summer of 1972, in the second half of our year-long joint sabbatical. We entered via Slovakia into Ukraine, stopped in L'viv (in Russian, L'vov), Oryol, Yasnaya Polyana (Tolstoy's estate) on the way to Moscow. After a while there, we took a side trip without the car, since we weren't permitted to drive everywhere we wanted to. We left the car in the hotel parking lot (!!!) and took the overnight train to Minsk, Belarus, later the train to Vilnius, Lithuania. We then had to fly to Riga, Latvia, since there were no train connections. After that, we took the overnight train back to Moscow, then drove north. We stopped in Klin, then Tver' (which then still had its Soviet name Kalinin), and Novgorod. Passing Saint Petersburg, we drove out to Tallinn, Estonia, which we hadn't gone to on the side trip because we knew we could drive there later. Coming back to Saint Petersburg, we stopped in Pushkin, then Peterhof (which we'll talk about in a moment), before going into Saint Petersburg (still Leningrad). We then drove into Finland, to Helsinki to sail back to Germany.

Sharper in memory is June 2005. It was part of the round-the-world by rail trip, and Tim Littler's Transsiberian train. coming in from Siberia, took a detour up to Saint Petersburg. We were given a fleeting tour of the city, but I remember going to Pushkin and seeing the Catherine Palace and its newly restored Amber Room. The trip then ended in Moscow. However, afterwards, I again took a side trip. I took the overnight train back to Saint Petersburg to see a lot more there on my own, and then took it again back to Moscow to see a lot more there on my own. After that, I took the train to Berlin and beyond.

This posting will include a lot in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian and some other Slavic languages. Those who were readers in 2005 will remember the practice texts to learn the alphabet in those postings. I would suggest that anyone wanting some extra practice give a quick look again at 2005/5-6-7. I'll transliterate everything, but it's more fun if things look a little familiar. Anyway, with a little knowledge of the alphabet, you'll enjoy our little game at the end.

As a general comment, Moscow is nice, especially around the Kremlin and Red Square, but also elsewhere. Yet Saint Petersburg is superb. There's good reason why UNESCO's designation of it as a World Heritage Site includes not only the historic center, but all the palaces, other buildings, and monuments in the countryside surrounding it, some of which we'll describe below. I also don't want to go into 20C history too deeply, but Saint Petersburg suffered gross indignities under the Bolsheviks, and far worse under the fascists. When the Nazis conducted the 872-day Siege of Leningrad, the loss of life was horrible and the destruction of most of the palaces and other infrastructure we'll be discussing was complete. Extensive restoration has followed, helped greatly by the special school that had to be established to teach students the arts of restoring architecture, furniture, and art objects. It took years after WWII to bring as much back to how it had been as possible, and the work is ongoing. But on to happier history.

Saint Petersburg and its Vicinity, with Peterhof    Peter the Great founded Saint Petersburg in 1703 as his Window on the West, and it remained the capital of Russia for most of that time until the Revolution. At that point, the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1918, where it has remained. Because of its western architecture and outlook, Saint Petersburg is considered the city in Russia most like Western Europe. It also remains the cultural capital of Russia.

While Moscow was centrally located, it was far too traditionally Russian for Peter's European tastes, and did not have the access to the sea that Peter considered vital (correctly so, in that sailing era), hence the move to the Baltic (Map by NormanEinstein). Click to review the sailing route from the Atlantic through Scandinavia to the easternmost end of the Baltic, the Gulf of Finland, at the very end of which is Peter's Saint Petersburg. You can also review the Baltic States I described above, and review our drive out to Tallinn and later to Helsinki, and see that we ended up driving on both sides of the Gulf.

Peter was many things, but he had two notable obsessions, the sea (the reason for Saint Petersburg's location), and the Dutch. He famously took six months of leave from his duties to travel to the Netherlands, where he worked in a shipyard, learning the shipbuilding trade, which expanded his maritime knowledge for use in his new capital.

He then decided to base the name his new city on Dutch rather than on Russian, and Sankt-Peterburg (Санкт-Петербург) was born. Note that, while most European languages have an S in the middle of Saint Petersburg, the original does not. (Also note that the current Dutch version of the name is Sint-Petersburg, with an S.) He also named the location of his major palace in the countryside in Dutch, Peterhof ("Peter's Court").

Once WWI broke out in 1914, the name Sankt-Peterburg was altered to Petrograd because, despite it being Dutch, it sounded "too German". While many would call this a change, I call it an alteration, an adjustment of versions of a name. Changing Nieuw Amsterdam to New York is a change of name. Changing Byzantium to Constantinople is a change of name. But outside languages accepting the Turkish version of the name, Istanbul, is an adjustment to the local Turkish version (note the –STAN- in both forms). Thus Peter- was altered to Petro- and –burg was altered to –grad (based on gorod "city" as in Volgograd), making Petrograd a Russified version. However, when, in 1924, Petrograd was changed to Ленинград / Leningrad, THAT was a real change. Finally, in 1991, the name went back to Sankt-Peterburg. (Only the city name was changed; the administrative region around Sankt-Peterburg still uses Leningrad, and the station in Moscow that sends trains here is still Leningrad Station).

But some cities can have nicknames: Philadelphia can be Philly, San Francisco can be Frisco; New Orleans, LA can be Nola. Sankt-Peterburg can be shortened to just Петербург / Peterburg, and most affectionately of all, it can be further shortened to Питер / Piter. It's a telltale sign of local affection for the city that, even throughout the Leningrad years, the nickname remained Piter.

The other Dutch name, Peterhof / Petergof was also Russified, but much later, in 1944, after the siege. Once again Peter- became Petro- and –hof/-gof became дворец / dvorets, the Russian word for palace, yielding Петродворец / Petrodvorets. However, the original name was restored in 1997.

Let's look at what we're discussing, the Saint Petersburg vicinity (click). We immediately see it's dated, since it uses both Leningrad and Petrodvorets. But otherwise this map is outstanding. We can see how Piter lies in the delta of the Neva (nye.VA) River, which offers so many nice water views in the city. We see our old north shore friend, the Primorskaya line going out to Sestroretsk. It's been extended further, and is now a commuter rail line. However, I believe the main line might be the next red one north, which then joins this into Finland Station.

Locate Peterhof/Petergof/Petrodvorets, which is on the south shore to the west of Piter. Then, to the south find Pushkin (aka Tsarskoye Selo) and right after it, Pavlovsk. But most to the point, locate the rail line from town to these two places, which is the main topic we're discussing here. It's the oldest rail line in Russia, which used to dead-end in Pavlovsk, but now goes beyond. You can tell how, in 1972, driving back from Tallinn in the west toward Piter, we stopped off at Pushkin, were unaware of Pavlovsk, zigzagged back to finally locating Peterhof, then made it to Piter, and later Helsinki.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site covering all of this area is called the "Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments", and lists some three dozen sites, some major, many minor. "Related" to the center of Piter are the old town part of Kronshtadt, Peterhof, Pushkin, Pavlovsk, numerous forts and fortresses in the area, other palaces and parks, country estates, the Neva with banks and embankments, various highways—and the historic rail line. Remember the four Ps: Piter, Peterhof, Pushkin, Pavlovsk. If they and their palaces are the pure gold here, the historic rail line and its story are at the very least pure silver.

The wonders of Saint Petersburg and of Peterhof, called the Versailles of Russia, are not the subject here. In Piter itself we'll just discuss rail, and we'll only include a word or two and a couple of pictures of Peterhof. Our map just showed it, with its surrounding town, faces north toward the Gulf of Finland. Copy and paste this map of Peterhof in another window:

http://www.ticketsofrussia.ru/maps/peter1800.html

Peter the Great ordered the construction of Peterhof. It's on a bluff directly overlooking the Gulf, with the upper park separated from the lower park by the Большой Дворец / Bol'shoi Dvorets (Great Palace, in red) and, below it, the Большой Каскад / Bol'shoi Kaskad—Grand Cascade. This is a view of the Grand Palace and Grand Cascade (Photo by Alex Florstein). Click to see the Samson fountain where he slays the lion. Many more fountains and outbuildings are in the lower garden. The greatest technological feature is that no pumps are used--all fountains, including the cascade, are gravity-fed. While my 1972 memories of Peterthof are weak, I definitely remember watching the cascade with the palace at the top. Also keep in mind that all of this is a restoration after the vast WWII destruction. This abbreviated commentary gives just a taste of Peterhof.

[I need to point out where I first learned a lot of this history years ago. In 1981, Robert K Massie published his Pulitzer-Prize winning biography of Peter the Great: His Life and World, a book that expanded my understanding of European history. Also highly revealing for me was his 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra, covering 20C Saint Petersburg history, most interestingly their imprisonment in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo.]

Working with Language    Before we continue, there are some language points worth making, both for the general understanding of language and languages, and also to become a little more familiar with how Russian works. If you like language, you should like this.

(1) NOUNS USED ADJECTIVALLY I have an ongoing fear of scaring people off with jargon, but this isn't too bad. You can have a brown shoe, a tight shoe, an attractive shoe. Or you can have a tennis shoe, a leather shoe, a work shoe. In the first three, adjectives are telling you what kind of shoe. In the second three, nouns are acting as adjectives to do the same thing. Putting a noun in front of the main noun in this way is the most common way this sort of thing is expressed in English and other Germanic languages. This also includes where the two words are written together as in "basketball" or "paycheck".

The most common way, perhaps, but it's not exclusive. While you can say "interest rate", you can also say optionally "rate of interest", whatever form suits your style at the moment. But wait! It's not optional to say "make of car" or "time of visit". You can't do it any other way. So the less frequent possibility is to take that noun used adjectivally and put it AFTERWARD, connected with a preposition, usually "of". While this can occur in English, it's almost the only way in the Romanic/Italic (Romance) languages. You MUST say "Gare de l'Est", even though in English you can say "East Station".

And there's a third way. In some situations in English, one noun cannot appear before another as an adjective. You cannot say *Britain cities or *Spain customs. (In linguistics, an asterisk denotes an impossible form.) You must change those nouns to actual adjectives, and say "British cities" and "Spanish customs". There are various ways to do so, but "-ish" is a common one.

So the patterns for what would be two nouns are: "x Y" as opposed to "Y of x" as opposed to "x-ish Y". While all patterns can occur in many languages, the first is the most frequent in English and related languages, the second is most frequent in French and related languages, and the third is most frequent in Russian and related languages. Let's use as an example the famous Saint Peterburg rail station named after Finland. English calls it Finland Station, the first pattern. French calls it the Gare de Finlande, the second pattern. Russian uses the third pattern and calls it Финляндский Вокзал / Finlyandskiy Vokzal, which is literally "Finland-ish Station". (And that's not "Finnish". The name of the language is финский / finskiy.) That first word is the word referring to the country, similar to "British" or "Spanish" above, and is "Finland-ish". You will also note that the Russian suffix –skiy, sometimes appearing in translations as –ski or –sky, and sometimes teased about as being so very Slavic, is the direct relative of –ish. That's the masculine form. The feminine is –skaya and the neuter is –skoye. Further proof: "British" in Russian is Британский / Britanskiy, which is obviously literally "Britain-ish".

(2) RUSSIAN GENDERS The whole point of this is to explain something we'll see constantly in this posting, the frequency of "-ish" as "-skiy". Leningrad Station in Moscow, mentioned above, is Ленинградский Вокзал / Leningradskiy Vokzal, literally "Leningrad-ish Station". The point is, if you're going to use a noun as an adjective, you MUST change it to an adjectival form, and, in addition to the SK one we just talked about, there is another common ending, an N one: -nyi, -naya, -noye.

We've seen this already, and will see it again soon. In the past, we talked about the Iron Road (railroad). While "iron" is железа / zhelyeza, the adjectival form is железный / zhelyeznyi. You can see that the word in this case happens to be altered by losing its last vowel before adding the ending, and it's an N ending. Then, to agree with the next (feminine) word, we get железная дорога / zheyeznaya doroga (stress YEZ). It would be worthwhile to learn the term, as it will come up a lot. It's abbreviated as Ж.Д. / Zh.D. which is the equivalent of R.R.

Russian words that end in a consonant are usually masculine, in –A, feminine, and in –O neuter. Compare "Russian student", "Russian vodka", "Russian radio", with the appropriate endings: русский студент / russkiy student; русская водка / russkaya vodka; русское радио / russkoye radio.

Now let's have some fun with this. This is a лебедь / lebed' (LE.bed') (Photo by Dick Daniels). Learn the word.

Here are two of them are swimming in an озеро / ozero (OH.ze.ro) (Photo by Wieschendahl). Learn this, too.

Now, if you were Чайковский / Tchaikovsky, and needed a good name for a ballet, what would it be? Wait! You don't know enough yet. You do know you need an adjective form of that first word, but not what it is. There might be a slight irregularity—and there is, and extra syllable. The adjective form in the masculine is лебединый / lebedinyi (stress the DIN). So how are you going to name the ballet?

Well, it has to be Лебединое Озеро / Lebedinoye Ozero (le.be.DIN.a.ye OH.ze.ra) (Photo by Paata Vardanashvili), of course (unstressed O's sound like A's). In other words, "Swan-ish Lake". A language related to Russian, like Bulgarian, works similarly: Лебедово езеро

That's the "x-ish Y" phrasing. But note the "x Y" phrasing for English: Swan Lake, German: Schwanensee, Dutch: Zwanenmeer, Swedish: Svansjön, and the "Y of x" phrasing of French: Le Lac des cygnes, Italian: Il lago dei cigni, Spanish: El lago de los cisnes, Portuguese: O Lago dos Cisnes.

Let's take a break to reward ourselves by listening for 3:13 to the main theme music on YouTube of Лебединое Озеро. Keep on saying its original Russian name to yourself as you listen.

(3) "CONNECTING O" One last point, to simplify things. It goes back to my noting, in elementary school, when looking at a map of Russia, what seemed to me at the time to be an incredibly long name for a city, Dnepropetrovsk, today in Ukraine. It doesn't seem so formidable today, but what does a sixth grader know? In addition, I see how easy it is to take apart to find the basic elements. Pyotr is a given name, Peter, and is also Tchaikovsky's first name. It forms into petrov to either make a family name, or a combining form. Russian cities often end in SK (Omsk, Kursk), so Petrovsk would be something like Peterville. There are probably several, and this one is located on the Dniepr River, so for closer identification it uses what I like to call a "connecting O" to form Dnepropetrovsk (Ukrainian: Dnipropetrovsk), which is like Peterville on the Dniepr. And the formidable dragon is slain.

But we'll see similar word formation as we discuss Pavlovsk ("Paulville"), and we've also seen the connecting O in Petrograd and Petrodvorets. The famous Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg is the Petropavlovskaya Krepost', which is a lot less formidable name when you know how to take it apart. I remember walking the fortress grounds in 2005 and thinking how melodious the name sounds when you don't allow its length to scare you.

Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin)    Review south of Piter where the other important towns besides Peterhof are located, Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin) and Pavlovsk. With Peter the Great having founded Saint Petersburg in 1703, in 1708 he gave an estate on some property 24 km (15 mi) south of Piter to his second wife, who would later become Empress Catherine I, but only reigned for two years, 1725-7, as she died young. Still, she was the one who started to develop the estate in 1710 as a royal country residence, which became known as Tsarskoye Selo. A century later, in 1808, the development around the estate became a town.

I've always taken that name at face value, which we'll discuss in a moment, and only now do I discover the actual confused origin of the name. In the 1600s, the estate, belonged to a Swedish noble, and it had a Finnish name, Saaren kylä, which, curiously, seems to mean Island Village, but that isn't important. Russian speakers took the name to be Сарское Село / Sarskoye Selo. The second word, pronounced sye.LOH, does mean "village" in Russian, but the first word despite its by now Russianized ending, doesn't mean anything. This is where the language phenomenon called folk etymology kicked in. "Sarskoye Selo doesn't seem to mean anything. But the Tsar's family is building a country estate there! I must have been mishearing it all along. It must be Tsarskoye Selo that people have been saying!" And so, through folk etymology, which essentially means "mistaken etymology" or "mistaken word history", the name changed to what it is today.

So what does the name mean? It can be translated, but all translations come out awkward. Realizing from the above discussion that it's expressed as Tsar-ish Village, with an adjective form of Tsar', how can you translate it? The intent is like English names such as Kingston, where you put a royal word in front of a variation of "town". Tsarston? Tsarton? It usually appears as "Tsar's Village", but I don't care for that possessive, so maybe Tsar Village? That's clumsy, but probably is the best, unless you want to be radical enough (why not?) to call it Tsarsville or Tsarville. YOU choose.

Again, while this is not the description of a visit, and we have to get back to the rail story, we can show a few pictures of the area so we're all on the same page as to the historic and artistic heritage we're involved with here, including the rail line. Copy and paste this link in another window:

http://www.ticketsofrussia.ru/maps/push800.html

Екатерина / Catherine (don't be disturbed at the E at the beginning of an otherwise familiar name) in 1717 started building the Екатерининский дворец / Ekaterininskiy Dvorets (Catherine Palace), modified over the course of that century, right through the reign of Catherine II ("the Great") in the last three decades toward the end of the century. Since she's the more famous Catherine, the palace is usually, but incorrectly, mainly associated with her. On the map find the palace facing SE, and the Екатерининский Парк / Ekaterinskiy Park around it. This is the restored Rococo Catherine Palace today (Photo by Alex Florstein).

Behind it, Catherine the Great later on did have the smaller, Neoclassical Александровский дворец / Aleksandrovskiy Dvorets (Alexander Palace) built in 1792-6 for her favorite grandson, who later became Alexander I. It also has its own Александровский Парк / Aleksandrovskiy Park. This is the restored Alexander Palace today (Photo by Vitold Muratov).

Surely the most famous location in either palace is the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace. It's a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. It was constructed in Prussia between 1701 and 1711 and was located in the Berliner Stadtschloss / Berlin City Palace until 1716, when King Friedrich Wilhelm I gave it as a gift to his then ally Peter the Great, at which point it was installed in the Catherine Palace, and extended over the years. During WWII, when all these palaces were horribly destroyed, the Amber Room was looted by Nazi Germany and the amber was brought to Königsberg, but in the chaos of war, it was all lost. But in 1979 attempts were made to rebuild the room (the palaces are still being worked on). Russian craftsmen worked for decades on its restoration, which was financed by donations from Germany. The reconstructed room was inaugurated in 2003, and I was able to see it on my 2005 visit. Amber is янтарь / yantar' and Amber Room is Янтарная комната / Yantarnaya Komnata (Photo by jeanyfan).

On the map, find the Lyceum and the nearby statue of Pushkin. The area to their right is the center of town, around that large square, on the way to the rail station. In 1811, Alexander I founded the Импера́торский Царскосе́льский лице́й / Imperatorskiy Tsarskosel'skii Litsei (Imperial Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum) to educate young men of upper-class families who would later occupy government positions. Among the first graduates in 1817 was none other than Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин / Aleksandr Pushkin, considered Russia's greatest poet. Even as he graduated from the Lyceum as a teenager, he was published and widely recognized by the literary establishment. In 1844, the Lyceum was moved to Saint Petersburg.

Tsarskoye Selo escaped 19C industrialization, despite Russia's first railway being built to and through it in 1837. But then came the 20C and the Revolution. The Alexander Palace was the favorite residence of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and was the family's initial place of imprisonment in early 1917. This is one of the last photographs taken of Nicholas, showing him at Tsarskoye Selo after his abdication in March 1917.

In 1918, the Bolsheviks renamed Tsarskoye Selo, wanting to distance themselves from tsarist names. Because of the large number of children's institutions in the area, and based on дети / dyeti (children) the town became, of all things, Детское Село / Dyetskoye Selo (Children's Village; Kidtown). But then in 1937 it was once again renamed, this time Пу́шкин / Pushkin, on the centenary of the poet's death, and assuredly, because of his fame at the Lyceum.

My recollections of Tsarskoye Selo from 1972 are between dim to nonexistent. Knowing we drove there, all I can picture is a memory of us sitting on a park bench looking at the statue of Pushkin. It's a memory that still retains a sweet aura around it. In 2005, we were taken from our train tour to Tsarskoye Selo/Pushkin, went somewhere to a nice lunch, then I clearly remember touring the Catherine Palace and seeing the Amber Room. So, mission accomplished, except that I cannot place that visit in space. I don't know the route the bus took to get there, I don't know where in town we ate, until I looked at the present map I couldn't visualize what the town looked like and where the palaces were located within it. It was a good tour, and typical of tours, where you're plopped down at a monument, do the deed, and leave, not knowing how you'd stroll around town to get a deeper perspective if you were on your own. In other words, I was there, and I was not there. And on neither visit was I aware of Pavlovsk. Still, I love the area and remain attached to it.

The map we have is excellent, but is too narrow. Look at this map of Tsarskoye Selo in 1912. You can tell its age immediately by seeing the first word at the top: ПЛАНЪ / PLAN has a hard sign at the end, which it no longer would have today. But I've compared this map with the town today on Google Maps, and its footprint has expanded a bit north and south, but this still gives us a good idea of more than just the center. You can see the Catherine Palace facing SE and the Alexander Palace above it facing SW. Although there are more suburbs today, downtown still centers around that square. But it's not very far to the rail line, and station, shown here—for future reference. Follow the rail line south just 4 km (2.5 mi), which will be just off the map, and you're in Pavlovsk Station in Pavlovsk, just a stone's throw away.

(3A) "CONNECTING O" (continued) I just threw out the name of the Lyceum a moment ago but we have to make it seem less formidable. It involves the "connecting O", but also can involve changes to the words involved. This happens in English, when "psyche" loses its final vowel when it picks up an O to become part of the word "psychotherapy". "Social" is altered to form "socioeconomic".

If you want to form a two-word expression into a single adjective, watch again what happened to Tsarskoye Selo in the name Царскосе́льский лице́й / Tsarskosel'skii Litsei. The first word lost its gender ending, but retained its adjectival SK when it added the connecting O. Selo was also altered, as it took on the appropriate ending.

Here's another phrase we know, железная дорога / zhelyeznaya doroga (railroad). It forms the adjective железнодорожный / zhelyeznodorozhnyi. Again the first element loses its ending, but retains the adjectival N, and the second word has a consonant change, G to ZH. Still, if you peel these long words like an onion, you can see what they're made of. Take a look at how you refer to the Tsarskoye Selo Rail Station that we just found on the second map. Close analysis will show all its elements:

Царскосельская Железнодорожная Станция
Tsarskosel'skaya Zhelyeznodorozhnaya Stantsiya

Pavlovsk    While Pushkin has developed to a town of about 93,000 around its palace complex, Па́вловск / Pavlovsk, where I have not been, located some 4 km (2.5 mi) further south, is apparently quite small, and is essentially not too much more beyond Pavlovsk Palace and its park. In modern times, Pavlovsk is actually a part of the town of Pushkin, and—here's a surprise--both of them are today within the extended city limits of Saint Petersburg! But now let's think two centuries back, when both were way out in the country.

These palaces were all a family affair. The Catherine Palace, associated with both Catherines, but mostly with Catherine the Great in the 1790s, who built the Alexander Palace nearby in that decade for her grandson, who became Alexander I. Similarly, since she liked the Pavlovsk area and frequented it on hunting trips, in 1777 she gave her son Павел / Pavel (Paul) and his wife the land that became Pavlovsk on the birth of their son, that very same Alexander. Here, Павловский Дворец / Pavlovskiy Dvorets (Pavlovsk Palace) was built starting in 1781. Павловский Парк / Pavlovskiy Park, which covers 2/3 of the town's area, is one of the largest in Russia or the rest of Europe. Copy and paste this map:

http://www.ticketsofrussia.ru/maps/pavlov800.html

Both the rail line and main road from Pushkin are on the left. The smallish town is on the lower left, near the palace. This is an 1808 watercolor in the Hermitage of the approach to Pavlovsk Palace, and this is a modern view of the restored palace (Photo by El Pantera) after the WWII destruction.

The Tsarskosel'skaya, a "Toy" Train    Now that we're fully aware of the historic and artistic importance of these two adjoining destinations south of Piter, we can figuratively get on board that train that was built to service them, the first ever rail line in Russia. It was the Царскосе́льская желе́зная доро́га (ЖД) / Tsarskosel'skaya zheleznaya doroga (ZhD). The faint of heart can use the translation, Tsarskoye Selo Railroad (RR). Or to have some fun, the Tsarskoye Selo Iron Road. But I suggest we just call it the Tsarskosel'skaya. (I always think words with this feminine ending are among the prettiest in Russian.)

The late 1820s into the 1830s saw the early growth of railroads as we know them today. Transporting freight was an early impetus for construction, as was passenger use. But the way Russia joined the movement is unusual. It was decided to build a railroad primarily for passengers, with minimal freight carried. Furthermore, at the beginning at least, this railroad, though public, was used mostly by the nobility, to get to their country homes, to just go sightseeing or to go to the entertainment center in Pavlovsk. As an indication of that, at the time it only had the three stops. Leaving Saint Petersburg, it went for 27 km (17 mi) directly to Tsarskoye Selo, and then just 4 km (2.5 mi) further, to Pavlovsk, and that was it. Its destinations were just two royal towns with palaces.

Seeing the economic potential or railroads elsewhere in Europe, the Russian government started exploring the possibility of building them as early as 1834. The expert they consulted submitted a written report to, and then met with, Nicholas I himself. The first suggestion was a railroad from Saint Petersburg southeast to Moscow (my first Russian bond certificate is for this RR) and then to further expand the system from Moscow east to Nizhny Novgorod, then beyond to Kazan (my second Russian bond certificate covers this expansion, and much more). The proposals then went to a commission, which accepted them—those would have been the two first railway ventures in Russia—but then also recommended to start out with a short railway from Saint Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk. This, as we know, is what happened, and so the Tsarskosel'skaya was built first, relegating the other, more important proposals to the second and third being built. While the two other proposals would bring great benefits—those did come later—this short line was built for the nobles to connect to their country homes. This line was short, had limited capacity, and no industrial value, so it had no economic, political, or social impact on Russia whatsoever. For those reasons, it's been described as a "toy" railway "in the Tsar's back yard", built for the pleasure and convenience of the nobility. Still, its historical impact has been substantial, and its opening in 1837 was an extremely popular event in both its immediate vicinity and across Russia.

A joint stock company was formed, and work started in 1836, using 17 engineers, some having worked in England. There were some 1800 workers, reinforced by 1400 soldiers. As with many early railways, and also early streetcar lines, something special was needed at the last stop to draw business the length of the line. The descriptions I've read have said that the Pavlovsk station was built as an entertainment center. There's truth in that, but I see it a bit differently, which we'll be getting to.

When the line reached Tsarskoye Selo later in 1836, the steam locomotives had not yet arrived, but they wanted to test the road. So on two Sundays that autumn, two two-car trains were pulled by horses. They later did numerous test runs with steam locomotives toward the south end of the line, but had to be particularly careful not to hit the wandering crowds of spectators who had come out to watch, indicating the popularity of the line. Nicholas and his family rode on one of the test trips.

The first train ran on 30 October 1837, when a steam locomotive pulled eight coaches from Saint Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo in 35 minutes. Its arrival was observed by Nicholas and many noble guests. This is a tinted lithograph made at the time of the train's arrival.

Regular rail service began in January 1838, but for the first four months, steam locomotives were used only on Sundays and holidays. The rest of the time, horses pulled the train (!!!), but by April, horses were eliminated and steam service became the norm. By May, service reached Pavlovsk. There were five trips per day, and, since there was only one track, trains would leave each end at the same time and used a bypass at the halfway point. But after a collision in 1840, traffic became one-way only. In the 1830s and 1840s, average train speed was about 30 km/h (19 mph), but by the 1870s, the speed increased to about 42 km/h (26 mph). That the train was popular is also shown by the fact that it had a nickname, Проворный / Provornyi. I had to look up the word, and found it means "quick, agile, brisk". I think it's safe to rephrase that and say the train was nicknamed "Speedy". The line was mostly for passengers with perhaps 5% freight usage. There was one additional service: passengers who wished to could travel with their small horse-carriages, which were loaded on special open platforms on the train. Does that make this an early version of the auto-train?

Take another look at the above lithograph. Beyond the charm of this picture, something else important is visible and should be noted. This rail line was built originally to the unusually broad gauge of 6 feet (1,829 mm), and you can tell how squat the train looks, how wide apart its wheels are. That gauge is 27% wider than standard gauge at 4 feet 8.5 in (1,435 mm). The only wider broad gauge I've ever heard of is when Brunel built his Great Western Railway in England at an incredible 7 feet ¼ in (2,140 mm). But the impracticality that an ultra-broad gauge presented was an important contribution of this line, because that gauge was subsequently abandoned. (So as Brunel's.) When another railroad bought out the Tsarskosel'skaya in 1899, the line was regauged to what has become the regular Russian broad gauge of 5 feet (1,524 mm) in practice reduced in modern times a hair further to 1,520 mm. After the Revolution, all the railroads in the northwest came under the jurisdiction of the Октябрьская ЖД / Oktyabrskaya ZhD (October RR), which today is a subdivision of Российские ЖД / Rossiyskiye ZhD (Russian Railways). But because of the Tsarskosel'skaya, the Oktyabrskaya can claim itself to be the oldest system in Russia.

I understand the original 1838 rail station in Tsarskoye Selo had already been rebuilt at least once in the distant past, and everything was destroyed in WWII, so the station there today is relatively modern. Still, I found a few pictures that are too good to pass by. The first is apparently an earlier station building, since the picture is from the 1890s, but these are passengers being picked up at the station, and, yes, on the left there actually is a тройка / troika. This next postcard is dated in the 1910s, so this is a later station building, or, as it says, Вокзалъ /Vokzalъ (I included the hard sign) or Gare. This is an interior view of the later building. The one picture shows, so typically, a religious shrine, and the other side shows the entrance to the ЗАЛЪ III КЛ / ZALЪ III KL, or III-Class Room. Russian uses the German word Saal, and if КЛАССЪ / KLASSЪ had been spelled out, it would have had the hard sign at the end as well during this prerevolutionary time period. Do you see how common—and useless—those letters were?

I just found out something about the station that delighted me. The town has had three names. I was prepared to report the weird situation that, if one wanted to visit today the Tsarskoye Selo part of Pushkin by rail, you'd have to get off at the rail station that still retained that middle name, Dyetskoye Selo (Children's Village). How weird that was. But digging into information in Russian that I found—and had to insert into Google Translate--the garbled results were clear enough for me to have found out the following. 2010 was the 300th anniversary of the founding of Tsarskoye Selo in 1710 and there was an effort to change back the station name at that time to Tsarskoye Selo. Even though Russian Rail supported the move, it didn't happen. Then, in 2013, the local administration issued a new proposal: to rename the station using a double form, Царское Село — Город Пушкин / Tsarskoye Selo – Gorod Pushkin, or Tsarskoye Selo – Town [of] Pushkin. The change was signed on 6 August 2013 by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Personally, I think it's a great compromise. It restores the original name, but also pays homage to the fact that Pushkin was a student here and did some of his earliest work. Now that I know more about his living and studying here, I'm even happier that I remember sitting and looking at his statue in 1972.

Vauxhall & Vauxhall Gardens    We need to pop off to London for a moment for another great story—in two versions. We've used the word вокзал / vokzal several times, having mentioned earlier Finlyandskiy Vokzal and Leningradskiy Vokzal. I'd heard years ago that the Russian word for "(rail) station" derives from the London neighborhood of Vauxhall, specifically its former Pleasure Gardens, and heard one version as to why. But after reviewing Pavlovsk and the Tsarskocel'skaya, I've now found a second version that I think is a likelier—and more intriguing--explanation.

There had been a site on the south bank of the Thames in the Borough of Lambeth that had been owned by someone named Faulkes, which had included a manor house called Faulkes Hall, also Foxhall, and eventually Vauxhall. Before 1660, a pleasure garden was built on this property called New Spring Gardens, which was mentioned by Samuel Pepys in 1662. Later it was renamed Vauxhall Gardens, and was an extremely popular entertainment venue until it finally closed in 1859. Because of its prominence and popularity, Vauxhall Gardens gave its name to the Vauxhall neighborhood around it, which in turn gave its name to the adjacent Vauxhall Bridge built over the Thames in 1816. The automobile company Vauxhall Motors was also named after this neighborhood, where it had had roots. Copy and paste this link, then click, to observe the gardens, neighborhood, and bridge. Note how the Gardens faced the river, first for boat and ferry access, later for bridge access:

http://www.vauxhallandkennington.org.uk/images/1831sw.jpg

This is a view of Vauxhall Gardens in 1751. Access was by boat across the Thames until the bridge was built. It was one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London from the mid-17C to the mid-19C and drew enormous crowds. One paid an admission fee, then could stroll the gardens, dine in venues of one's choice, listen to concerts, watch tightrope walkers, hot-air balloon ascents, and fireworks. As a further indicator of popularity and importance, note this image of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in 1732. Dining in the "supper-box" on the left (click) are, from the left, James Boswell, Dr Samuel Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith. In the large white dress on the right is an actress talking to the Prince of Wales, later George IV.

(After Vauxhall Gardens closed, the land was redeveloped, and much later was subject to late-20C slum clearance, at which point part of the original site was opened as a public park. It was initially given the older name, but was renamed in 2012 as Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens—a nice gesture to history, although it's apparently just a public park today.)

But the popularity of this venue spread, including to New York. Perhaps you recall in 2011/2 the discussion of the fabulous 1776 Ratzer Map, showing at that date a tiny New York existing only at the southern tip of Manhattan. Click, then walk up "The Broadway Street" to the Common, which is today City Hall Park. A little beyond, you had a choice, either turn left to the New York version on the Hudson of Vauxhall Gardens, which opened in 1767, or instead, proceed straight ahead to its competitor, Ranelagh Gardens (misspelled on the map).

Perhaps today's amusement parks are the successors to pleasure gardens, although one pleasure garden stands out, Tivoli (Gardens) in Copenhagen. It opened in 1843, and is one of the most popular parks of its kind in the world today. When it first opened, it was called "Tivoli & Vauxhall", including a reference to the former Jardin de Tivoli / Tivoli Garden in Paris, the part of the name that stuck.

Now to the rail story at Vauxhall. A year after the Tsarskosel'skaya opened in 1837, the London & South Western Railway (LSWR) opened, in 1838. Its route entered the London area from the Southwest up the south bank of the Thames, but did not go to the center of the city. Instead, it opened an inconvenient station at Nine Elms, on the southern edge of Vauxhall. On arrival at Nine Elms, passengers had to either continue overland further into London, or take a steam boat up the Thames from Nine Elms to points between there and London Bridge. Copy and paste this detail of an 1847 map of the area:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Vauxhall_1847_Joseph_Cross_map_detail.jpg

We see Vauxhall Gardens, Vauxhall Bridge, and how close Nine Elms Station was. As a matter of fact, since the rail line didn't really reach the city, but did reach the famous Vauxhall Gardens, Nine Elms station was also commonly referred to as "Vauxhall", perhaps in the hope that some of the fame would brush off onto it.

But a decade later, the railroad finally built an extension closer into London. Nine Elms station was closed, and, where the line now passed Vauxhall Bridge, an intermediate station was opened, still open today, that was actually named Vauxhall. Copy and paste:

http://www.vauxhallandkennington.org.uk/images/baconspringgdns.jpg

The line then terminated, as it still does, at the then-new Waterloo Station. Copy and paste:

http://www.maps-of-london.com/Lambeth-map.jpg

Вокзал / Vokzal    And now we can finally get back to the Russian connection. Modern Russian, referring to either the London neighborhood or the automobile, uses Воксхолл / Vokskholl (Voks + kholl), where the H, thankfully does not appear as a G, but as KH. But in the mid-19C, вокзал / vokzal appeared in Russian as the word for "(rail) station". It's believed that it derives from "Vauxhall". How can that be? What's the connection between a pleasure garden and a railway station? I've given the two modes of thought fancy names.

THE LONDON HYPOTHESIS The hypothesis I'd heard that's long been suggested is this. It's known that a Russian delegation visited Vauxhall in 1840, three years after the Tsarskosel'skyaya opened and two years after the LSWR opened. They were there to inspect the construction of the new railway, although I cannot believe they avoided stopping in at Vauxhall Gardens as well. But they made a mistake. Nine Elms station (Vauxhall [Bridge] station came years later) was referred to as being at Vauxhall, even on the 1841 written schedule. Their mistake was that they thought that Vauxhall was the generic word for the station building, not the name of the stop. The mistake was compounded three years later when Nicholas I himself visited the area in 1844 and continued the same mistake. From then on, every Russian railway station has been called a вокзал / vokzal.

THE PAVLOVSK HYPOTHESIS We said earlier that passengers would take the Tsarskocel'skaya to Pavlovsk because of the entertainment center there, also that the Pavlovsk station was built "as an entertainment center", a thought that I considered awfully fishy. How could that be?

I saw claims in Russian (via Google Translate) that to attract the public to the last stop of the railroad they wanted a new Tivoli, a beautiful Vauxhall, with entertainment, dancing, games of chance, and dining. A building was built, right at the beginning in 1838, that included a concert hall and restaurant. The area at Pavlovsk station became the first permanent concert institution in Russia, including a symphony orchestra. Starting in 1856 for ten seasons, the railway company (!!!) arranged for the Waltz King Johann Strauss to come and perform. Composers Prokofiev and Gliere performed.

This information put my head spinning. I'd seen on the map that the railway station was off to the west side of Pavlovsk Park. How could it have a concert all along with it? And then, digging in Russian Wikipedia in translation, the answer suddenly popped out at me. Look again at the map of Pavlosk by copying and pasting this link:

http://www.ticketsofrussia.ru/maps/pavlov800.html

There's the station over on the left, continuing on to the south. And that's the answer. There were two different stations in Pavlovsk! In 1899, when the larger railroad bought out the Tsarskocel'skaya and regauged it, it was a dead-end short line running into the middle of the park, and was not extendable. Look at the map, and follow the dotted line to the OLD Pavlovsk station, right in the park. How could they extend the line with the palace in the way? So, before the line entered the park, they isolated that last bit of track and its station, and extended the line outside the park and built a new station (since replaced) off to the side, with continuing service south.

Realizing that there were two stations is only part of it. I'd say that the description of the old station was described backwards. Instead of calling it a station with a concert hall, it makes much more sense to call it a concert hall—and more—with rail service. That's backed up by the fact that we know who built the pleasure gardens. Michael Maddox was an English entrepreneur working in Russia in this period. He was a co-founder of a theater that became a predecessor of the Bolshoi Theater. He was the one who established a complete Vauxhall Gardens in Pavlovsk back in 1783. When the railroad arrived in 1837, the Gardens were well established, and I think it's safe to say that the rail station serviced the local version of Vauxhall Gardens—surely to the railroad's delight—rather than the other way around. Thus, the entertainment center was a Vokzal, the station was Vokzal station, and the meaning shifted.

The buildings are long since gone, due to fire, also WWII. But we have some great illustrations. I've seen this beautiful 19C drawing described as showing the Pavlovsk train terminal. That's idiocy. The trains may have stopped at it, but this is clearly more than a train terminal. So one then looks at the Russian version, where it's described so much more accurately as the Павловский музыкальный Вокзал / Pavlovskiy Muzykal'nyi Vokzal. That's literally the Pavlovsk Musical Vokzal, but we don't need the adjective form. Let's say it's the Pavlovsk Music Vokzal. And why not call it the Pavlovsk Music Vauxhall, with the train station attached somewhere?

Look at this image of the Pavlovsk Music Vauxhall on the Pavlovsk Park grounds a quarter-century later at the celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Tsarskocel'skaya RR, also described in some literature as the Pavlovsk Railway Concert Hall.

It's all gone now, but in Russian Wikipedia, and nowhere else, I found pictures of a lonely marble plaque on a boulder in the snow (Photo by Andrew Krizhanovsky). This is the plaque that I'm proud to say I was able to translate by myself looking up only one word. The date reference reflects the new-style and old-style calendars:

На этом месте июня (22 мая) 1838 года был открыт Павловский музыкальный ВОКЗАЛ, крупнейший центр культурной жизни России.

On this site in June (22 May) 1838, the Pavlovsk Music VOKZAL was opened, the premier center of cultural life in Russia.

I looked up крупнейший / krupneyshiy to find "biggest, first-string". I thought "premier" fit better. But I'm also happy to say I found a typo. Click to look closely at the last word on the first line where it says место / myesto, which is "site, place". But after a preposition, it needs to change to the way I wrote it above, месте / myestye. Maybe the stonecarver had a bad day, but it's easy to write "o" for "e".

There is talk online—unconfirmed--that plans are afoot to restore/rebuild the Pavlovsk Music Vokzal. It would be a glorious thing. We shall see.

I prefer the Pavlovsk Hypothesis to the London Hypothesis as to why a train station in Russian is a vokzal. On the other hand, both stories can be right, reinforcing each other.

Vitebskiy Vokzal    Moving on, let's go up to Piter at the northern end of our rail line. The station there was called Царскоселький Вокзал / Tsarskosel'skiy Vokzal when the line was a short line, just going from there to Pavlovsk, but when the bigger company bought it out in 1899, they extended it due south to the city of Витебск / Vitebsk, which was within Russia at the time, but now is in the north of Belarus. At that point, the station became Витебский Вокзал / Vitebskiy Vokzal. It's the oldest station (site) in Saint Petersburg and in all of Russia, for obvious reasons. I have not seen this station, but I understand there's a replica inside of that first train, "Speedy".

But the first building of 1837 was a wooden affair, which was rebuilt in 1852 and replaced in 1904, so this is not the oldest station BUILDING. The present 1904 building has an ornate frontage and includes a pseudo-Renaissance cupola and a square clocktower. This period postcard still calls it by its older name. Look carefully at the Russian name and pick out the two hard signs, plus the old lower-case "I"—use its dot to guide you. This is Vitebsk Station today (Photo by Alex Florstein), looking much the same. Click to see the sign with the name.

But I understand that the wonder of the station is its Art Nouveau interior (Photo by Alex Florstein) from the turn of the 20C that caused it to be considered the most ornate of the St Petersburg stations. The whole station was restored in 2003. I understand there is/was inside a separate pavilion for the Tsar and his family, as well as a marble bust of him.

Saint Petersburg Rail Stations    Similar to what we did with Paris, we can take a look at the Saint Petersburg rail stations, and also Moscow's. While most of them are actually (dead-end) terminals (like Grand Central Terminal in New York) and not (pass-thru) stations, (like Penn Station in New York), I'll stick to English colloquial usage and call them all stations, just as everyone says Grand Central Station, no matter what. Copy and paste the link to this excellent map:

http://parovoz.com/maps/spb-1237x1600-256.gif

Click to see that—whoops!—it's all in Cyrillic. Welcome to Russia. We can work around that. The red lines are Russian gauge, thick if electrified, thin if not. The few blue lines are/were narrow gauge at 750 mm (29.5 in). Either color dotted shows disused lines. Peter the Great built the city for maritime purposes on the water's edge, so when rail came along, you couldn't get a circle of stations in the same way as in Paris or Moscow. But before we look at today's five stations, we have to mention one that, to my surprise, is now closed, odd considering the famous train that used to serve it.

At the bottom, find the station marked with X's, whose nearby tracks are now disused, and their former trains have been parceled off to the stations on either side. "Warsaw" is pronounced var.SHA.va in both Polish (Warszawa) and Russian (Варшава). Poland was once part of the Russian Empire, and trains from here used to access it, so this is/was Варшaвский Bокзaл / Varshavskiy Vokzal. It was originally built in 1851 for a short line to another of the Tsar's residences in Га́тчина / Gatchina (!!!), but later extended to Warsaw and to the Prussian border, connecting Saint Petersburg to Western Europe. The station was closed in 2001 and part of it now is a railway museum. I've heard that the rest may become a shopping mall.

This would hardly be worth mentioning except for a special rail connection. When we were discussing the Wagons-Lits company, we mostly discussed the Orient-Express running southeast from Paris to Istanbul. But there was also a long distance north-south pair of luxury trains, the Nord-Express and Sud-Express, as you can see in this pre-WWI map (Map by Matsukaze). The combination of routes of these private trains was meant to connect Lisbon with Vladivostok, clear across Eurasia. Transatlantic ships would dock in Lisbon, and people would take the Sud-Express (with a connection to Madrid) to Paris. Then the even more famous Nord-Express would continue to Belgium, with connections to London, and then via Berlin to two routes to the Prussian border. At the border, passengers had to change, cross-platform, from a standard-gauge Nord-Express to a Russian-gauge Nord-Express and either go north to Warsaw Station in Saint Petersburg or east via Warsaw itself to Moscow. There, passengers could take the Transsiberian the rest of the way. After WWI the route was cut short at Warsaw, and then Cold-War politics after WWII, plus air travel, caused the end to these trains. Still, just as we said that SNCF wants to re-start an Orient-Express service from Paris to Istanbul, Russian Railways has already started a through service called the Trans-European Express from Moscow (Byelorusskiy) to Paris (Est) without a change of train.

Back to the five stations on the Saint Petersburg map. Instead of being in a circle, there's one station on the north side, and the rest point south. Serving all northern routes, including to Finland, is Финляндский Вокзал / Finlyandskiy Vokzal (Finland Station). It's most famous for being the location where Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland in April 1917 ahead of the October Revolution. Later, he had to flee back to Finland via this route, but then secretly returned, disguised as a railway worker, in August, and, as they say, the rest is history. In 2005 I made my way to this station to sit on a bench in what is still called Lenin Square to contemplate his statue, and history.

I've been totally unaware until now that the station wasn't originally Russian at all. It was built by the Finnish State Railways in 1870 as its eastern terminus. It formerly contained a special pavilion for Russian royalty. It was owned and operated by them until early 1918 when the last train fled carrying station personnel and other Finns to safety. Later, ownership of the station was exchanged for Russian property in Finland.

Since 2010 there has been high-speed service to Helsinki with four daily departures each way, as a joint Russian-Finnish venture, and a 5.5-hour trip is now 3 hours, with an on-board customs check. There is also local commuter service, including on the former Primorskaya route along the Bay of Finland to Sestroretsk and beyond (2014/13). The former station for that line, Приморский Вокзал / Primorskiy Vokzal, is shown in blue on the river. It was closed after catastrophic flooding in 1924. Finland Station also took up the slack from another closed station. To its right, find the tributary river flowing into the Neva, the Охта / Okhta, and the crossed-out former Охтинский Вокзал / Okhtinskiy Vokzal, which served a small northeastern route that failed in the Depression.

The next station is unusual, because it's the newest and most modern, and is a through station, purpose-built in 2003 to shunt traffic from other stations. Right below the closed Okhta Station is the Ладожский Вокзал / Ladozhskiy Vokzal (Ladoga Station) (note change of G to ZH), named after the huge lake to the east of the city. This station serves routes to the east and north that previously went from the adjacent Moscow Station, and some from Finland Station. As a through station, trains from Moscow that are to continue north and that don't need to terminate in Piter use this station.

Now look at the bottom of the map. To the left of the closed Warsaw Station is Балтийский Вокзал / Baltiyskiy Vokzal (Baltic Station). I haven't been here, either. It opened in 1857 as the Петергофский Вокзал / Petergofskiy Vokzal (Peterhof Station), because that's as far along the south shore of the Gulf of Finland it went, again for the convenience of royalty, who used one of the wings of the station. In 1872, the line was extended into Estonia, still part of Russia, to Tallinn, which is when the station got its present name. Service today is just suburban; an Estonian train connects to Vitebsk Station instead.

We've already discussed Витебский Вокзал / Vitebskiy Vokzal (Vitebsk Station), which is the one to the right of Warsaw Station. And the one to the right of that, is Московский Вокзал / Moskovskiy Vokzal (Moscow Station), which leads us into our next railroad. But if you'd like to see the stations on a city map that uses the Latin alphabet, copy and paste this link, then click to enlarge:

http://www.nlr.ru/tus/20091112/eng/map/map.jpg

The Nikolayevskaya    Think back to when both the rail expert and the commission told Nicholas that the first railway should connect Saint Petersburg with Moscow, and the second rail venture should lead out of Moscow. But because of the Tsarskosel'skaya being built in 1837, they became the second and third rail ventures. The Department of Railways was created in 1842 to oversee the construction of the first major railway line between St Petersburg and Moscow, whose gauge became the Russian standard.

Three names come up for this vitally important line, which reflect Russian history. When it was completed in 1851, it was, logically, the Петербурго-Московская ЖД / Peterburgo-Moskovskaya ZhD (Peterburg-Moscow RR). The station in Peterburg, as we've seen, was logically called Moscow Station, and the one in Moscow was called Петербургский Вокзал / Peterburgskiy Vokzal (Peterburg Station). (The station in Moscow is the oldest in that city; the station in Peterburg is the oldest station BUILDING in that city, where the Vitebsk Station has the oldest station site.)

But four years later, it was decided to honor Nicholas. You may think they went overboard. The renamed the new rail line after him, as well as both stations. In other words, whichever direction you went in, you left from Nicholas Station on the Nicholas Railroad and arrived at Nicholas Station. That's a lot of repetition, but remember all the things named after Queen Victoria, including a city in Canada, a state in Australia, a waterfall in Zambia/Zimbabwe and, as for rail stations, Victoria Station in London. Also, to this day there's a Penn(sylvania) Station in Baltimore, Newark, New York, and on another line, Pittsburgh. Today, these are all Amtrak connections, but at one time the Pennsylvania Railroad would connect all these Penn Stations, so such repetition isn't uniquely a Russian trait. Anyway, each station was at this point the Николаевский Вокзал / Nikolayevskiy Vokzal (Nicholas Station) and the rail line was the Николаевская ЖД / Nikolayevskaya ZhD (Nicholas RR).

We have period turn-of-the-20C pictures of each of these similar-looking stations when they had the same name. This is a photo of the Nikolayevskiy Vokzal in Peterburg and this is a postcard of the one in Moscow. In the spelling of both names, look for hard signs and the lower-case dotted Latin "i".

After the (October) Revolution, names changed again, and in 1924 everything was changed to "October". The line became the Октябрьская ЖД / Oktyabr'skaya ZhD (October RR), a name that spread, as mentioned, to the entire northwestern rail system of Russian Rail to this day. Each station became the Октябрьский Вокзал / Oktyabr'skiy Vokzal (October Station). But this has changed again, although only partly. In 1930, the station in Peterburg is very logically renamed Moscow Station, but the station in Moscow is Leningrad Station, and hasn't been changed any further. Nevertheless, the route is still referred to online as the Nikolayevskaya, which is the name I'll use. It's also the name on my bond certificate.

The planning of this railroad between two major cities gave rise to a most curious controversy. Some reactionary officials said there would be major social upheaval if the masses were allowed to travel. It was decided in the beginning that only the well-to-do would be allowed to travel on this line, and that each passenger would be subject to strict passport and police control. It boggles the mind. Can you wonder that this led to a Revolution?

The railway was built in an absolutely straight line between the cities, by serfs, with heavy loss of life. In 1842, Nicholas summoned George Washington Whistler to work as consulting engineer on the railway (see 2013/24 "Whistler's Father"). It opened in 1851 after about ten years of construction. At the time, it was the longest double-track railway in the world. This is a wood-burning locomotive on the Nikolayevskaya c 1858 (Photo from SMU Central University Libraries).

Moscow Rail Stations    We'll take a more modern look at the Nikolayevskaya later, but since we've now reached Moscow, let's see where its stations are and how the system expanded from it as a hub. Copy and paste this link:

http://www.johomaps.com/eu/russia/moscow/cityrail_moskva_lines_lat.jpg

Metro lines are in yellow, rail lines in brown. The Kremlin is in the center, on the Moscow River. Moscow being a centrally located hub, it has nine major stations (actually, terminals). One is named for a country (Belarus), but all the others have names of cities along their route (although two are surprisingly minor). Let's start in the south and go clockwise. I will translate them without the adjectival "-skiy", which is not necessary in English—although many include it anyway.

Павелецкий Вокзал / Paveletskiy Vokzal (Pavelets Station) leads southeast to cities such as Volgograd. It's named after a tiny village along its route that was once a last stop. Киевский Вокзал /Kievskiy Vokzal (Kiev Station) leads south and southwest to Kiev (Ukraine), the Balkans, but also to Prague, Vienna, and Venice. Белорусский Вокзал / Belorusskiy Vokzal (Belarus Station) leads southwest to Minsk (Belarus) (spelled with an A; the Russian version has an O) and beyond to Warsaw, Berlin, and beyond into Western Europe. I've left twice from this station, on both trips. First, for our side trip in 1972 to Minsk, Vilnius, and Riga, and second in 2005, to continue the round-the-world by rail trip via Minsk, Warsaw, Berlin, and beyond.

I'd never heard before of the Савёловский вокзaл / Savyolovskiy Vokzal (Savyolovskiy Station), which is the other one named for a minor town along its route. Apparently, it only is for suburban service to the north. Рижский Вокзал / Rizhskiy Vokzal (Riga Station) leads east to Riga (Latvia), and is where we returned from Riga on our 1972 side trip. Although it's busy, it's the least busy in Moscow. Note the same G to ZH change in the adjective that we saw in Peterburg, where Ladoga changed to Ladozhskiy.

As we swing around to the northeast, we come to an interesting cluster of three stations, which is actually 3+1. First we come to Ленингрaдский Вокзал / Leningradskiy Vokzal (Leningrad Station), which we've already discussed, with service northwest to Saint Petersburg. Directly adjacent to it is Ярославский Вокзал / Yaroslavskiy Vokzal (Yaroslavl' Station), which leads northeast to Yaroslavl' (the L' is dropped in the adjective form), but which is also the western terminus of the Transsiberian RR from Vladivostok. Directly across the square from these two is Казанский Вокзал / Kazanskiy Vokzal (Kazan Station), which leads east to Kazan, and to the southeast. But added to this trio is the nearby Курский Вокзал / Kurskiy Vokzal (Kursk Station). This station is unique, because it operates in three different directions. It sends trains south to Kursk and Ukraine and also east to Nizhny Novgorod, but it also has an elevated connection north via Leningrad Station, thus allowing through service.

The cluster of three stations lies around Комсомольская площадь / Komsomol'skaya Ploshchad' (Komsomol Square). First came Leningrad Station in 1851 (oldest in Moscow), and this remote square was chosen for its location both for its cheap land and because of fear of fire caused by a railroad. Yaroslavl' Station arrived in 1862, Kazan Station in 1864, and in the 1870's a line leading to Kursk station was added via an overpass over the square. But people discount the fourth connection when referring to the station informally as Площадь Tрёх Вокзалов / Ploshchad' Tryokh Vokzalov (Three Station Square), or even more simply, Три Вокзала / Tri Vokzala (Three Stations). This square is one of the busiest in Moscow, and is the first sight one sees when arriving on such interesting routes as the Nikolayevskaya or the Транссибирская / Transsibirskaya.

Two Russian Bond Certificates    We now have enough background to fully appreciate the two Russian bond certificates in the mini-collection, which are the oldest ones.

НИКОЛАЕВСКАЯ ЖЕЛЕЗНАЯ ДОРОГА
Nikolayevskaya Zhelyeznaya Doroga
Rail, in Russian, Bond, 1869

First an 1869 bond for the Николаевская Железная Дорога / Nikolayevskaya Zhelyeznaya Doroga, or the Nicholas Railroad. (Click to enlarge to inspect more closely.) Neither of these certificates is particularly decorative, or with exciting vignettes. Aside from the history, the visual pleasure is in the florid text from the tsarist period, including the antique spellings. This is what first intrigued me when seeing similar ones back at the Firebird Restaurant.

Inside the decorative border, the first thing that strikes the eye is the splendid Coat of Arms of the Russian Empire from the latter part of the 19C. After the Soviet period, the contemporary Coat of Arms of the Russian Federation is similar in style.

The heading is similarly impressive, the first line, which is more legible, says grandly:

Or nearly. If you can peer at the writing in the small image, you'll see the middle word actually has the antique spelling РОССIЙСКОЕ, with the old Latin "I". Then, the main line with the actual name is a slight disappointment, since it's in a decorative font and hard to read, but it does say:

Or nearly. Again, the center of the middle word still has the old yat (Ѣ) instead of the E. Also very prominent is ОБЛИГАЦИЯ / OBLIGATSIYA, which is literally "obligation", but, like in other languages we've seen (FR & SW: obligation; IT: obbligazione; DU: obligatie), is what in English is called a bond. Anyway, here it has the old "I": ОБЛИГАЦIЯ.

Right below that is an indication that this was an international bond. Note the line with numbers, equal signs, and abbreviated words. It says the bond is denominated as 125 рублей / rubley (rubles), which then equals 500 франк[ов] / frank[ov] ([French] francs) which equals 20 фунт[ов] стерл[инг] / funt[ov] sterl[ing] (pounds sterling) which equals 236 голл[андских] гульд[енов] / goll[andskikh] gul'd[enov] (Dutch gulden, or guilders).

But why specifically French, British, and Dutch currency? For that you have to read the text after the next paragraph, which I'll have to tell you about, since it's written small even on the original. Aside from doing business in Saint Petersburg (in rubles) you could do business internationally in Paris with Готтингер и К° / Gottinger & Co. Always be wary when you see a G, and sure enough, it represents an H. This was the private banking firm established in Paris in 1786 by Hans-Konrad Hottinger as Banque Hottinguer (note the added U). It was sold to Credit Suisse in 1997.

Or if you were doing business in Amsterdam, you could go to Гопe и К° / Gopye & Co. Another G! A little research shows that "GO.pyeh" is really Hope & Co, a Dutch bank founded by Scotsmen in the 18C. Hope & Co specialized in foreign loans, and one of its renowned transactions was the financing the purchase of Louisiana by the United States from Napoleon's France in 1803. In the 19C they specialized in railway investments in the US and in Russia, as we can see. In modern times, it was merged into other banks.

And if you were in London, you could go to Беринг и К° / Bering & Co, or Baring's Bank. Founded in 1762 and of German origin, this is the institution that famously collapsed in 1995 after suffering losses of £827 million ($1.3 billion) because of poor investments by an employee in Singapore, Nick Leeson.

But superimposed on top of this information are three huge letters, a couple of paragraphs high, Н Ж Д / N Zh D, the initials of the railway. Oddly, in this font, the Russian N (H) actually looks like a Latin N.

ГЛАВНОЕ ОБЩЕСТВО РОССИЙСКИХ ЖЕЛЕЗНЫХ ДОРОГ
Glavnoye Obshchestvo Rossiyskikh Zhelyeznykh Dorog
Rail, in Russian, Bond, 1890

But the original rail-building advice had been move on to a second large rail venture that would build routes out of Moscow. This was done by a company that was financed internationally and is represented here. The second bond one is an 1890 bond for the Главное Общество Российских Железных Дорог / Glavnoye Obshchestvo Rossiyskikh Zhelyeznykh Dorog, or the Grand Russian Rail Company (literally the "Main Company [of the] Russian Iron Roads"). To inspect more closely, click to enlarge. Much of the historically significant certificate is similar to the previous one, so let's concentrate on that clearly written, bold title, particularly the second line, which is a gold mine of antique spellings. Find the Latin "I" in the first word. Find the yat in the middle word. But then note those gloriously useless hard signs at the end of each and every word in that second line, none of which would be there today.

To see what work was done by this company I looked for a map. I found an ideal one I really liked, a find that was made even more significant when I discovered that the map was actually issued as part of the 1857 prospectus for this very company, the Grand Russian Railway! (Click)

We've looked recently at the Austrian Empire abutting Prussia and the German Empire. This map not only shows those two (and Turkey-in-Europe in the Balkans), it shows the size of the Russian Empire of the time, to be compared to the number of countries located all across this area today.

Look at St Petersburg. If you don't blink, you can see the short line west to Peterhof and the (unnamed) short line south to Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk. We can now see the route of the Nikolayevskaya to Moscow. We see that this new company has built the recommended line east to Nizhny Novgorod, that is not yet extended to Kazan, as suggested, but which would leave from Kazan Station.

It built a line south to the hub at Орёл / Oryol, and then to Kursk (Kursk Station), and then on to Crimea. Given today's troubles in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, you can see how Russian interest in this area is historic. The Tsar was particularly interested in a line such as this to help connect warmer and colder climates, and which could transport food from the south to the north. The Tsar also wanted to see Moscow as a hub similar to Chicago.

The company also built a transverse line from Oryol via Vitebsk (where the Tsarskosel'skaya would be later extended out of Vitebsk Station) to the coast at western Latvia. This was crossed by a line out of Peterburg via Vilnius (Lithuania) to Warsaw. This is presumably the route that left from the former Warsaw Station. Ponder all the countries that used to be within the Russian Empire.

This company built some 4,300 km (2,672 mi) of railroad, and the first stretches were ready in 1863. In 1868 the Grand Russian Railway also took over the operation of the Nikolayevskaya.

Riding the Nikolayevskaya in 2005    Most of the time we have a trip narrative along with all the background, and I know just what fits here. It didn't take place yesterday, but in 2005, as a side trip north, just as we'd done a side trip west to the Baltics in 1972. It was part of the round-the-world by rail experience across Canada, then with Tim Littler's Transsiberian trip out of Vladivostok. That trip did do an extra run to Peterburg, and Tim just confirmed to me that we must have stopped at Moscow Station, then come down the Nikolayevskaya to Leningrad Station to end the trip, but being led from place to place, even though I enjoyed their side trip north, I just wasn't fully aware of the mechanics, or even which stations we'd gone to. Therefore, well in advance, I had planned my own side trip north and back, which would then be followed by continuing west all the way to Southampton. The side trip was to see more of Saint Petersburg than we had, and to ride the Red Arrow overnight on the Nikolayevskaya.

The tour ended at our comfortable hotel on the south side of Moscow, on the south bank of the Moscow River diagonally across from the Kremlin, but awkwardly positioned for Metro connections. We all checked out before noon, then sat around the lobby as different people would leave for their flights home. I believe I was the only one leaving on a rail trip, and my train left close to midnight. I wrote on the laptop and had dinner. Normally, I would jump on the Metro to go to the station, but this hotel was not near enough to a stop to do so. My own hotel choices are always dictated by location, location, location. This had a Kremlin view, but poor Metro access. Win some, lose some.

I have an aversion to taxis. I use them when necessary, but I suppose it's the lack of control that bothers me. On a subway, you know just what you're doing going from A to B. I'm not big on buses, but in place like Ottawa, bus routes are made very clear, and I'm comfortable there on buses. But in a taxi, you give up all control of your route, especially when abroad, to the whim of the driver and to the meter, which clicks off the seconds of your life. The last taxi I took was to Shamian Island and back in Guangzhou [2014/2], which, as usual, worked out just fine, but I'd have still preferred the subway. In Stockholm in 2006 I had to take a taxi to the ferry terminal to cross to Finland. The taxi was halfway across Stockholm in the wrong direction before I checked with the driver, who was headed for a different ferry terminal. Taxis, especially abroad, are not my cup of tea.

But nevertheless, I knew I'd need a taxi here in Moscow, so my plan was to go to the concierge, who spoke English, and ask him to arrange for one. I figured, he'd phone for a taxi, send a bellboy with me out to give the driver directions.

But that didn't happen. The concierge grandly said, certainly, he could arrange for a "transfer", and quoted me an astronomical price maybe four times what I'd expected. It was just his upscale way of doing business, but I felt I was being had. I told him no, got my bag, and went outside, not being sure what would happen, in a language I didn't know all that well.

But what a piece o' cake this particular taxi venture turned out to be! I hadn't realized there was a taxi stand right outside the hotel. I went up to the first, typically black, taxi, which, thankfully, was metered, told the driver "Leningradskiy Vokzal", and off we went. I was then actually quite pleased that I was able to follow his route, and could tell he'd gotten on the Садовое кольцо / Sadovoye Kol'tso ("Garden Ring"), the circular ring road of avenues around Central Moscow, which developed way back in the 1820s on the site of the former ramparts. We joined the road at about the 5 o'clock position, and got off at 2 o'clock, right where I expected to see the square with the three stations, which was just a couple of blocks to the side.

Since the train left at midnight, it was already well into the evening, but Moscow has long days in the summer, and Saint Petersburg even moreso, so it was still quite light. This view shows Komsomolakaya ("Three Stations") Square (Photo by Дар Ветер) in bright daylight, but gives you an idea.

We're looking east along the Square. The taxi would have come in from the far right, and made a right turn under the rail overpass, which, as we know, connects Leningrad Station to Kursk Station, the fourth one in the area, off to the right. Traffic then flows clockwise around the teardrop center, first passing the striking Kazan Station, seen on the right (Yaroslavl' and Leningrad are opposite, one with black towers and one with a white clock tower). This is a similar night view (Photo by Robert Lawton), which is more spectacular, but where you can't see details as well. This is Kazanskiy Vokzal more in the light I saw it in (Photo by Sergey Korovkin 84). I do hope that by now, after all this practice, you can read the name on this, and following stations.

We had to make a U-turn to the left to reach the north side of the square, and then first passed the black towers of Yaroslavskiy Vokzal (Photo by A.Savin), but in more darkness than this, and finally reached my goal, the oldest station in Moscow, Leningradskiy Vokzal, with its clock tower (Photo by Sergey Korovkin 84). This was about the degree of late-summer daylight that I experienced at the time.

The station is still beautiful, and I had time to kill, but my main recollection is of looking at the large departure board overhead. The destinations were of course in Cyrillic, then came the departure times, then the путь / put' or track (rhymes with "lute".)

There are many expresses daily along the Nikolayevskaya, mostly to Peterburg. I find it interesting that trains 5 & 6, one in each direction, are called the Николаевский Экспресс / Nikolayevskiy Ekspress, apparently an hommage to the history of the route. But the most famous pair of trains on the line are trains 1 & 2, the Красная стрела / Krasnaya Strela (stre.LA), or Red Arrow (Photo by Glucke), the train I'd be riding in each direction. It's a Russian sleeper train that's been running on this route since 1931, a run that takes just eight hours. Picture it as midnight to eight, although in reality it's five minutes earlier each way. One leaves each end daily at 23:55 and arrives at 07:55, a pace only interrupted between 1941 and 1943 during the Siege of Leningrad. I was eager to take it, although its prompt running time has a drawback. You go to sleep right away, and get up early to disembark, leaving precious little time to actually enjoy the train! But it was worth it.

But back at the departure board, I was pondering the Red Arrow, when I was asked a question. I'm often asked questions in public. For instance, I remember Germans in Berlin asking me in German for directions, and, later on in this present trip, back in Moscow, an older woman asking me in Russian for directions to Red Square and the GUM department store. I had just come from there and we were only a couple of blocks away, but I'm delighted to this day that I not only understood her question, but actually managed to babble something in Russian that set her on her way, quite contented. Or maybe I was even more contented. But this question was different, because it was in English, from a Brit, trying to read the departure board.

One cannot learn enough of Asian languages overnight to read signs there, which is why I was glad that Japanese rail signs flipped between Japanese and English, also, to some extent, in China and Taiwan. But travelers to Greece would do well to learn just a bit about that alphabet, and to Russia and similar countries to learn a few letters in Cyrillic. On the special Transsiberian train, I noticed the lack among a dozen friends I'd made, and I held three ad-hoc, complimentary seminars on that train for them (practice texts still available in 2005/5-6-7). Payback for me was when we were on a bus and people were delighted to be able to read a sign like this (Photo by Malcolm Manners) and understand why the bus came to a halt. Of course, this (Photo by Useddenim) was even more obvious, as is this (Photo by Zac allan), but it's always fun to knowledgeably pick out the letters.

The Brit may have been going where I was, I don't remember, but he came up to me because he was at a loss, so I helped him with the city names in Cyrillic, and then he could follow the time and track. But his image always comes back to me when I think of people who didn't take the time to learn even just a few letters before coming to Russia.

The overnight trip was pleasant but short, and early in the morning we got off in the equally impressive Moscow Station (Photo by A.Savin) in Saint Petersburg. Click to read the name, as with the stations in Moscow. It's the oldest preserved station (building) in Peterburg, from 1851, since Vitebsk Station was rebuilt, and the clocktower is an indication of its similarity with Leningrad Station in Moscow, where we just came from. It's located on a large square right off Невский проспект / Nevskiy Prospekt (Neva Boulevard), the main thoroughfare of the city, as can be seen on this map (copy and paste):

http://www.ticketsofrussia.ru/maps/center800.html

My hotel was a ways down Nevskiy Prospekt, and in the early morning hour of 8 AM, I certainly didn't need a taxi; a Metro connection was possible, but was only one stop away (on the green line, red to blue), so I did as I had planned and walked it, rolling my bag behind me and sightseeing on the way (see map). For the next few days I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the city on my own, including the Petropavlovskaya Krepost' (if you need to—I hope not--refer to the earlier mention to find it on the map), used the Metro frequently, and the same when I got back to Moscow, also including the Metro, fully explained in 2005/9 "A Tale of Two Cities". The day I was to return to Moscow, I walked the route again along Nevskiy Prospekt in the well-lit northern summer evening to Moscow Station for the pleasant ride back.

But we can make one last point regarding rail, specifically the two Metros, and also the Russian language. We saw the interesting derivation of the word vokzal for "station", but there is also the word станция / stantsiya. We've said that the ending -tsiya corresponds to "-tion" in English and other languages, when we saw obligatsiya; also seen in words like organizatsiya, natsiya. The only oddity about stantsiya is that unusual N in the middle.

So what's the difference between a vokzal and a stantsiya? I've found that any difference seems to be flexible. I've seen it said that a vokzal is large, as in main cities, while a stantsiya is small, as in Tsarskoye Selo. I also get the feeling that a vokzal is a terminus, while a stantsiya is a pass-thru station. But this doesn't seem to be so hard-and-fast. Ladoga Vokzal is a pass-thru station, and the square in front of Tsarskoye Selo station is called Privokzalnaya Square, or In-front-of-the-Vokzal Square ("Station Square"). So take any difference with a grain of salt.

But any Metro station, even at the end of the line, is a stantsiya, in either city, or elsewhere, which brings us to a grammatical point. Vokzal ends in a consonant, so an adjective with it takes a masculine ending, -skiy, or –nyi. Stantsiya ends in an A, so an adjective takes a feminine ending, -skaya or –naya, the version I think is so much prettier. (You can also think of Stolichnaya Vodka in this regard). Now take a look at this map of the Moscow Metro (Map by Sameboat), or, if you wish, put it in a separate window for the upcoming game:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Moscow_metro_map_en_sb.svg

Many stations are named after streets, as we just saw with the Nevskiy Prospekt station, or the Park Kultury (Park of Culture, Culture Park) station in Moscow on the 1 (red) & 5 (brown) lines, but a huge number of stations are adjectival. Sit back and review how many stations you see across this map that end in –skaya (and a few in –naya). For example, get on at the eastern end of the 3 Line (blue) and go downtown.

We then come across a very cute clashing at rail stations. Coming in on the 3 Line, you stop at Kurskaya (stantsiya), where you might get off and go upstairs to catch at train at the Kurskiy (Vokzal). But instead, let's change at Kurskaya to the 5 Line (brown) southbound, which is circular around the center city. We'll either stop at, or one stop away from, all nine rail stations (in dark black). Compare their names with the Metro names.

The only variation is when you reach the last three clustered together, where we're arriving as we speak from Peterburg. Here the Metro station is named after the large square, Komsomol'skaya, rather than any of the three stations. So let's do what I did in 2005 on arriving at Leningrad (Leningradskiy) Station.

Keeping in mind that the Moscow Metro is known for its lushly decorated stations, and also keeping in mind that you have to recognize at least a few letters in the alphabet to make sure you're at the right stop, we go down into the Metro at this stop (Photo by Mikhail [Vokabre] Shcherbakov). Can you read the name on the marble wall? Are we where we should be?

This station serves both the 1 (red) line and 5 (brown) line, and we want the latter. Although we'll be staying in Moscow a few days, we'll be leaving for Berlin and beyond from Belorusskiy Vokzal, and I've found a hotel two short blocks from it and from the Metro. So we only need to go three stops to the west and get off at this stop. Can you read it? Are we in the right place?

Sure enough, we want Belorusskaya for both the hotel and for Belorusskiy Station. Well done.

Moscow Metro Game    Let's turn what we just did into a little matching game. Below is a lettered list and below that a numbered list. Say you're in Moscow and want to find your way to a given Metro station. Use the Metro map to find the stations in the lettered list, whose names are simply described, and alphabetized. Then consult the numbered list, and find the correctly matching picture of the sign on the station wall, to make sure you'll be getting off at the right stop. Test yourself. I'm not giving any answers. You're traveling on your own. Make sure you don't get off at the wrong stop!

A) the Academy of Sciences, Line 6 (light brown)
B) the town of Dmitrov north of Moscow, Line 9 (gray)
C) the author Dostoyevsky, Line 10 (light green)
D) the scientist who perfected the periodic table of elements Mendeleyev, Line 9 (gray)
E) the October Revolution, Line 6 (light brown)
F) the Proletariat, Line 7 (purple)

1) Choice 1 (Photo by Mikhail [Vokabre] Shcherbakov)

2) Choice 2 (Photo by Mikhail [Vokabre] Shcherbakov)

3) Choice 3 (Photo by Alex Rave)

4) Choice 4 (Photo by Mikhail [Vokabre] Shcherbakov)

5) Choice 5 (Photo by Mikhail [Vokabre] Shcherbakov)

6) Choice 6 (Photo by Mikhail [Vokabre] Shcherbakov)