Day 94 - Monday 5 August - Grodno

Monday 5 August

We didn't have to rush, and had a leisurely walk past the Lutheran church and through the gardens to the mid-city meeting point with our guide for the day, Ludmilla.
 

 Either a kindergarten, or junior school.  Lots of grass and colourful equipment.

 Inside St Basil's Orthodox cathedral

 A mural called "Science".

There had obviously been a recent memorial service here too, but our guide didn't give us a satisfactory answer.

She showed us around our end of the city, including St Basil's Orthodox where we'd been yesterday, but we didn't let on.  There was a service going, with singing, and it wasn't until we got up to the front that we found it was a small choir, 1m,2F+conductor.  Across the road, she pointed out a religious shop that the lady in the StB's shop hadn't mentioned half an hour earlier, so I did lots of shopping.  We also went into the tourist office and were given heaps of stuff to read.  Then Valentine drove us away. It is small city (pop. about 400,000), hardly any traffic in town, and lots of trees and parks.

Explaining MASAC





Next it was the St Francis Xavier cathedral, which was nearly demolished during the communist years. 

 

 At the top is the Holy Spirit window

 Top row is Christ, with 4 evangelists

Bottom row I can't remember.  All these sculptures are in wood.
 

We walked to the old and new castles, the synagogue and the fire station, where a uniformed person comes out on the fire tower each day at noon and plays the trumpet.

 Soviet Square sundial

 The entrance to the large ghetto.  The smaller was a few km away.

Lord David Garadenski, killed in 1326, was a warrior with Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, against the Teutonic knights.

 The Old Castle C11, devastated in the Great Northern War 1700-21, currently under renovation.

 The New Castle was begun in 1734.

 From the new, past the old, and on to the church.

The church of the Nativity of the Virgin.

 The fire station with mural, tower, and trumpeter.

 The Grodno synagogue.

Then Valentine was back, and we drove to the C13 church of St Boris and St Gleb, pride of Grodno.  It has been half reconstructed, because it kept falling down the river bank.  I posted cards to T&T from there.

The new part is timber, the old is brick, with big stones set into it. 

 Lots of icons, and one special miracle-working Mary.

 The back view is much better than the front.

Lots of old wooden houses on the road leading to the church.

We grabbed some supermarket food, and drove out of town, passing by the site of a WW2 fort and memorial,

 2 crosses, 1catholic, 1 orthodox.

 A beautiful silver Lenin outside a town hall.

to the Augustow Canal, which was built in C19 to join the Vistula River of Poland with the Neman River of Grodno, and which eventually led to the Black Sea. There are 18 locks, but soon after it was finished new politics and the railway made it obsolete. It was damaged during both WWs, but is being restored and is seeking UNESCO certification.
 

 The lake made by the lock.

 The channel is used as a spillway, and when restoration work was being done.

 The upper lock gates

The lower lock gates.

We ate as we walked around the area of the Dambrowka Lock, which was very quiet compared to how it must be on summer weekends. 

 2 sleighs in the shed of the lock-keeper's house.

As we came back we had to stop to photograph some storks nesting on posts. 

 Overlooking the river and the city.

Another remnant from Soviet days.


At the far end of city, we left our guide and driver, and walked home again, down Soviet St pedestrian plaza, calling into the local department store which has a viewing garden on its roof..
 

 A nice mural about how we may look the same, but we have differences.

 Looking back to the station.  Our building is the one behind the one with the red sign on top.