Jesus and The Golden Ring

Jesus and The Golden Ring I planned our trip to the Golden Ring, the most historically and culturally significant grouping of villages and towns outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg, literally the last day before we left the USA because it was so difficult to find a travel agency to book it. It is still very uncommon for individual travelers to travel into the countryside; there are many regulated bus tours, but private or individual trips are difficult.  First, the cities form a bit of a ring around Moscow and are not easily reachable, I.e., one must have a vehicle and a strong constitution. The first day we visited Vladimir and Suzdal, spending the night in Suzdal. This ring has the most incredible collection of onion domed cathedrals and churches and more working, not to mention non-working, monasteries and convents. To get here we traveled with a driver, Nickalaus, and guide, Youlia,  on a 2 lane road that the Russians thought was a 5 lane road. Shoulders on either side were the 3 and 4th lanes and the center line is the 5th lane. This is your Russian Driver's Ed course. Barbara G, eat your heart out... One car is passing on the left shoulder while another car coming the opposite direction is passing on the right shoulder while every one is using the suicide middle line and there is weaving and speeding and I am quite sure some are vodka drinking and oh, my Jesus, there are no atheists in a foxhole. Even our guide, cute Youlia from Vladimir confessed to nervousness when asked. I chose to close my eyes and pretend to sleep. Hell, I damn near wet myself when we ran over a large remnant of a truck tire and had to pull to the shoulder to assess the damage!! But, that was just one road we traveled. Another one was a field and forest country back road, so remote that I thought I heard banjo music. It was paved back in the Tsar era and hadn't been maintained since. I swear you could have lost a Volga in some of the holes.  Nicholas did his best to save us from whiplash, but I aged two weeks in the three hours it took to drive to Yaroslavl. And, tragically, there were no tualyet along our route. I will leave the rest to your imagination.  As for Jesus, Christianity is alive and well in the post Soviet Russian Federation even though the Communists destroyed many churches and others were converted for the good of all, i.e.  a beautiful gold domed cathedral in Suzdal one of only 33 out of 70 that survived, was converted to an electrical plant. Religion of all faiths was outlawed and if caught, you were persecuted. Our guide said that they had to secretly congregate in their homes but only with those that they trusted not to tell on them. We were amazed by the number of working churches, and by the mass that is said for a service. 2 hours. No pews, no chairs. One wanders from Icon to Icon and kisses each one. One after another, with no sanitizing spray. One after another. Americans would have a cow. I was astounded by the depth of their faith. In fact, most of the faithful were of the age where they grew up in the Soviet era. The ratio between young and old was disparate. Hard to know why except that maybe the elders realized just how fragile the freedom to worship could be.  We ended our tour of The Golden Ring with a night in Sergiev Posad and it was the most Holy day of the year and the Patriarch, or the Pope of Russia, was offering mass. It was thrilling to be here as the pilgrims from all over made their way to the monastery. More tomorrow about The Holy Day of St. Sergius. P.S. today is the day that Tsar Nicholas was killed along with his entire family.