The view of Ulyanovsk from my 13th floor room at the Hotel Venets.
Ulyanovsk, the birth place of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (otherwise known as the main man of the Soviet Revolution, Lenin), sits high on a hill overlooking the vast expanse of the Volga. The city was built in the 17th century as an outpost in the Tsars ever eastward expanding Russian empire. Ulyanovsk, originally known as Simbirsk, developed from fort to frontier town to Lenin’s birthplace to a major industrial center. I went here with a relatively negative pre-conceived notion of what the city would be like. I imagined a dark and grey joyless city filled with nothing but plants and workers dreading the daily grind. Instead what I found during my three day stay in the city of Lenin was a bustling, bright, friendly and fun city.
Me and the letter YO, or in Spanish Yo y YO! The letter YO is increasingly not used in Russian typing so there are those trying to promote it and keep it from being dropped from the language, hence the headstone looking monument which sits in Ulyanovsk.
I was in the city for work and was running a fairly tight schedule so I didn’t have much of a chance to see the many folk museums sprinkled around the city, or to enter Lenin’s family flat or the massive Lenin Memorial Centre. What I did do was wander the center of the city, and wander through the Park of Friendship of the Peoples which sits high on the bluffs overlooking the Volga River. I also spent a lot of time in the cities entertaining libation establishments.
My first day in Ulyanovsk I was lucky to get some blue sky but during the evening a thick, almost eerie, fog rolled into the city and sat on us for the next 48 hours.
Autumn colors in the Park of Friendship of the Peoples overlooking the Volga.
This fog, which seemed to be covering the entire country, resulted in my flight being delayed and me having to sit in an uncomfortable and unheated
Ulyanovsk airport for 5 hours.
Granted it was only about 1 or 2 degrees Celsius and not truly cold for
Russia - but I still froze my @$$ off!
Getting back to Ulyanovsk…with or without fog the city was great. The Volga was beautiful, especially with the fall colors. The streets were lined with trees and I thought the city had a nice mix of brightly painted wooden buildings, 19th century small apartments and larger Communist era high rises. What really made the city great though was the people and some of the post work extracurricular libation establishments.
Enveloped in Ulyanovsk fog.
While I didn’t have time to see any museums I did get the chance to explore a variety of bars, restaurants and coffee houses, which I will eventually write reviews on (or at least I tell myself that).
Some of my favorite places with the best food and drinks and the friendliest customers and staff were Okna, Piano Art Café, Traktir Pevanoy, and Pizza Maxi. There was also a really tasty coffee house with Turkish style coffee just off the main drag, but I can’t remember the name of it. The point is that the downtown is filled with really cool clubs, a bowling alley (of all things) and lots of surprisingly trendy bars. There is a University in the center of town so the whole place has a very young and vibrant feel to it and almost everyone we met, whether in the magazines, on the streets or in the bars was exceedingly warm and friendly.
Ulyanovsk.
So if you happen to get to Ulyanovsk I think you’ll find the visit quite enjoyable. It is a bit out of the way and not particularly easy to get too, but if you’re heading through the Volga region down to Kazan, Samara, even Astrakhan you should try to make it to Ulyanovsk for a couple of days. I think you’ll enjoy it and the residents of Lenin’s city would be happy to welcome you.
PS - for more pics as well as the videos "what do the babushka's say?" and "Sergie v Pavel Chess Match" go to http://picasaweb.google.com/mpadraicmurphy/Ulyanovsk.
