Green Submarine - 26 april 2005 Today we paid an obligatory visit to a documentary War Memorial exhibition at the Design Department of FESTU University. Then I went into a submarine and strolled along the shore up to the Navy Museum. |
 At 10.00 in the morning, we already had an appointment with Alexander Gorodny to visit a War Memorial Exhibition. At the Design Department, a building right next to the Modern Art Museum, was a large collection of documentation about WWII on display. Among others it included a private collection of postcards from the Rector of FESTU University. Among the most peculiar items in the exhibition were an inlaid wooden box and a sewn painting with the portrait of Stalin, a picture of a horse with a gas-mask. In order to keep the museum's floors and carpets spic & span, visitors are requested to put on cotton bags over their shoes at the entrance.
Then we climbed on Vladivostok's prime panorama spot. A just one minute walk from the new Modern Art Museum brings you up to the potential tourist hotspot that gives breathtaking views over the city and the 'Golden Horn' bay. Underneath you'll be watching the 'Funicular' climbing up from down under. You'll be, because right now they're into major reconstruction works that ought to be finished by july 2005. We walk down the adventurous steps under the Funicular towards FESTU University, another War Memorial, and the wonderful restored Pushkin Theatre.
picture catalog for 26 april 2005 |
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When you look back you see the distinct building of the Museum, the outskirts of the Vladivostok suburbs, and the endless hills surrounding the city. Right now the area might seem rather lifeless, but contruction work is raging. New company buildings in the back, and villas for the wealthy Vladivostokians on the hill with view over the bay. Soon this part of town will be booming.
The walk takes us further through Pushkinskaya Street to the Academy of Fine Arts where we visit the art shop, safely tucked away very far down in the basement ans sized a mere 3.00 by 5.00m. That's less than the surface of Luc Tuymans' large painting that is scheduled to feature in the scheduled first exhibition of the Modern Art Museum. We are greeted by the Director of the Academy in his office, when Christine makes a picture of a still life he set up next to his office window, he happily gives her a big vase as a present.
The highlight of the day however is a visit to the 'Memorial Submarine'. It's a real C 56 hoisted on land, and partly turned into an exhibition space with a display of historic photographs and documents. At the end, you can crawl through a small hole into the original interior. Immediately you enter the control room, lined with numerous valves, meters, pipes and leads. Then there's an officers' room with wooden cabinets along the walls and cosy green cloth benches. Still another (even smaller) hole further you enter the torpedo room. Along one side are two unfired torpedoes, on the other side are six bunks for the men permanently alert and ready to attack the enemy....
On the outside the C 56 is being repainted and rebuilt for the upcoming festivities on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, so no opportunity to go on the decks and check out some impressive machine guns out there. Instead I walk down towards the waterfront to get closer by some more heavy machinery that's packed there. Lots of rusty Navy and commercial vessels, the ferry terminal with ferries that crosses the Golden Horn, but also go to some of the Russian and Chinese islands off the coast. Doubt if I'll have time to board one of those.
I keep walking away from the centre of town along the waterfront wherever possible. Soon I'm into a desolate area with shipyards, endless walls and worn out railroad tracks, litterally off the beaten track. I move up towards Svetslanskaya Street and enter the back yard of the Pacific Fleet Museum. They have a collection of cannons, tanks and other military gear, and a navy patrol vessel parked before the entrance. Surprise, surprise, the museum is closed due to reconstruction.
I walk back in the direction of the centre of town, drop in the 'Sniper' fisherman's, outback and weapons store where tough men in black are discussing the purchase of a handgun. Since I have no intention of interfering with the local mob, I move into the numerous bookshops along Svetslanskaya. At the corner of the post-office I notice a grocery vendor who rebuilt the back of his mini van into a store. He just fits in nicely behind his little counter. In Vladivostok you're always into some kind of surprise.