A couple of interesting points about the city:
a) It was founded account the war between Sweden and Russia in the 17th century, and as Russia could no longer source its mineral supplies from Sweden, and as Tsar Peter had heard locals in the Ural region had made small utensils out of metals, he sent explorers out to assess the region for minerals;
b) It was the major supplier of equipment for the wars, and a former KGB stronghold;
c) Lennin never made it to Yekaterinburg, even though it was a key battleground between the White and Red armies in the year after the revolution;
d) It was the assasination location of Nicholas II (the last Tsar of Russia) and his entire family;
e) Boris Yeltsin was born in this region, and became region governor prior to becoming Russian president.
Characteristically, the city is full of monuments of famous Russians (and the Dutch engineer who set up the factory and dam). The monuments are well placed and generally quite interesting. Our favourite monument was the Black Tulip (which many Westerners call the Kalishnakov statue) which has a soldier downward looking, with his Kalishnakov rifle pointed toward the sky. Perhaps he is thinking about the loss of a comrade, or missing home, or just the futility of war. This monument is dedicated to both the Afghanistan and Chechnyan conflicts, not WWI or WWII.
The other highlight was visiting the Church of Spilled Blood, which is the actual site of where Nicholas II was assasinated by the Bolsheviks. This is a new church building, as the old house that existed was torn down by Yeltsin, during a period of unrest in Russian society, in order to promote harmony. The church was established on the site some 10-15 years later, in 2003.
The story goes that Nicholas and family were all killed so there was no Tsar to reinstitute as the civil war raged on. The Bolsheviks admitted that Nicholas had been assassinated, however alleged that his family had sought exile to the east, even setting up a fake carriage on the Trans Siberian with all curtains closed, in order to collaborate the story that they had not be assasinated at the same time. To this day, conspiracy theories still exist that the Tsar's family members (and the tsar himself) survived and some decendants are still alive.....sure, perhaps having tequila in Mexico...with Elvis, Ulisses (former Brazilian president) and Harold Holt.
Post a nice buffet lunch, including the borsch soup, we had an afternoon tour out of the city, into the surrounding Ural mountain region. The mountain region is hundreds of millions of years old, and hence no longer that high, however the shifting together of the tectonic plates that resulted in the mountain range also resulted in the numerous minerals that exist in the ground today.
How would one describe our guide? Vadim could in appearance and manner be described as Krameresque, which both Cinthia and I thought without conferring. I also thought he was a little like the main character out of "Life is Beautiful", very positive about everything and like Italians, very expressive in his body language. The most humerous aspect was that instead of being the tour guide waiting for us to take photos, he was the self annointed photographer. Whilst this was a little unusual, the fact that he had a Canon 5D camera (which costs more like 10G) showed that he took his photography seriously. For the afternoon tour we were his muses, as he told us how and where to pose for 'his' shots. He ended up providing us with a CD of all the photos he had taken of us!
In addition to stopping at 2 of the numerous monuments to the Asian/ European border, we also visited the memorial to the remains of 'missing' people from the 1930s, a period where Stalin believed that a vast number of people were 'enemies of the state', and thus had to be done away with. No trial, and often just forcefully removed from homes and executed, then buried in the forest region. Priests, intellects, merchants, there were lots of people, or reasons that were deemed sufficient reason for excution. The numbers across Russia were not in the thousands, they were in the millions, with 1937 and 1938 the height of time when assisinations were carried uout under Stalin's monstrous regime.
On the return Vadim stopped into a real Russian house, and played the situation as if he didn't know the lady at all. He was quite a character, and Cinthia bought the concept that he didn't know the lady, and hence was initially embarrassed to enter the house. We saw her huge garden outback, ate fresh forrest berries she grew, and then dined inside with pancakes and jam she had made, along with a tea. Quite an unusual travel experience..... and consistent with the tour promotion... see the Real Russia. The tour was certainly exceeding our expectations thus far.
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