Christmas Eve day here in Vlad was a lovely, sunny day with temperatures only around -3C and barely any wind. We decided to take a drive around the south and east edges of the Murav'ev-Amurskii Peninsula, in the direction we hadn't yet traveled. (You can explore the photos and the geography on the Flickr map if you follow the linked picture.)
We were pleasantly surprised at the landscape and the scenery. Although you do get the usual trash deposited all over the place, this lessened as we got further from the city, until it really was nearly pristine nature (the kind that Russians love to praise even while they are throwing their plastic bags and Snickers wrappers out into the vast expanse of "priroda" that they are claiming to enjoy).
We stopped along the way at a couple of little bays and beaches -- we weren't the only ones to enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon, but I can tell that these locations are surely much more full of people in the summer and fall. At a beachside cafe at the little resort point of Lazurnyi Bereg ("Azure Shore"), we had kebab (or shashlyk in local parlance), Uzbek dumplings (manty), some pickled herring, and a salad of fresh vegetables. And were again pleasantly surprised at the friendly, slightly shy waitress. Definitely not the norm in Russia.
In case you are wondering about the name of the peninsula, Count Nikolai Murav'ev-Amurskii was governor-general of Eastern Siberia in the mid-nineteenth century, and there are a bunch of things in and around Vlad that bear his name. If you're dying to know more about him and Russia's exploration of the Far East (perhaps in preparation for a visit to these parts?), I suspect that Mark Bassin's 1999 historical monograph "Imperial Visions" may provide a good, if academic, overview in English.
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1 comment:
Great ! Keep it up !
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