Tag volgograd

Stalingrad Warrior

Seemingly small from a distance, the Battle of Stalingrad monument is absolutely massive.  It takes a few minutes to realize the tiny dots walking around the base are people.  The long stretch of stairs heading towards the statue are surrounded by battle scene frescoes, memorial plaques, and even sounds and music.  Each step up, sets the mood and almost brings you back to to the battle.  By the time we reached the eternal flame, we were all covered in sweat as it was mid-July.  Everyone was complaining and walking through the sprinklers that happened to be running at noon.

Russian Volgograd Guards

Once we reached the flame room however, everyone’s face straightened in awe at the size of the room.  There were two guards standing in front of the flame – a fist wrapped around a torch.  As you spiral around the room counter-clockwise, the walls next to you are covered with the names of all the officers who died in the Battle for Stalingrad. By the time we reached the top of the stairs, no one was complaining about the heat anymore as there were two more guards standing at the exit, unmoving, as a blanket of sunlight enveloped them.  Beads of sweat were rolling down the guard’s face as he stood silently in his Class As.  The lead guard made his rounds and upon seeing his fellow comrade sweating profusely, we walked over to him, removed his cap, and slowly wiped the sweat from his brow.  I managed to snap a few photos of this as it happened, but we also got a lot of video – which we haven’t converted electronically yet.

The next section of the monument was covered with gardens and more officer monuments as we approached ‘The Lady of Stalingrad.’  From the top of the hill, the lady looks down at the Volga River where the Germans and Russians clashed and dug in for nearly seven months as the battle raged.  Stalingrad was vital to both sides, not only because it was a main transport hub on the Volga River for coal and oil to fuel Stalin’s Armies, but it would also be an ideological victory for the Germans to take a city with the Soviet leader’s name and provided access to the Caucuses via the Caspian Sea.

Stalingrad Eternal Flame

The Stalingrad War Memorial in Volgograd was one of the best Communist War memorials I have seen.  I am glad we took a 500 KM detour, along with several other ralliers, to make the trip to see it as I can’t imagine to many more opportunities in my life to be that close to the city.  After the memorial, we quickly headed out of town to drive to Kazakhstan.  Our convoy would be ending soon as we turned South for Uzbekistan and the rest went due East across the whole of Kazakhstan.

Imagine you have just jumped out of a hot shower on an extremely hot day, and then you plug in the hair dryer on high heat and point it right at your face. This is the closest parallel I can think of to explain the unending and abusive heat we felt on the road to Volgograd from inside the Russian border. Perhaps, once your hair is dry, turn the oven on max and pull a chair up and open the door. Waves of heat so powerful they make your eyes water (well, until you run out of eye moisture that is) spilled into our tiny cars. Naturally, we had no air conditioning and having the windows open only made the heat pour in more quickly. We closed the windows and sat in our mini car sauna as we sped along roads that were literally melting from the heat.

Eventually, and it did feel at some points like we might not make it through the waves of heat, we arrived in Volgograd. Having spent several previous evenings in other towns running around lost in the city looking for a cheap hostel or hotel, we decided not to deal with the hassle this time. Mike, Bill and I left the hostel finding up to our trusty convoy mates, and we three purchased ice cold beers and sat outside on a park bench, playing the ukulele (no one threw money in my Mongol Rally fund for the free music, I’ll add) and hanging out. Over the next several hours we consumed a few more ice beers and with every passing hour more ralliers joined our park bench party. By late evening, we had roughly fifteen ralliers from several convoys. It was a relaxing and pleasant evening, but we still had no place to stay. Mike jogged off in search of a hostel and came back with news of a hotel for $45 a room. Not cheap, by any means, but we took it, showered and cleaned up from so many days on the road and all met at the bench an hour later for dinner.

If you happen to look at a map you’ll notice we went out of our way to get to Volgograd. Once there, however, we found it a bit of an irritating place to travel. The roads are congested and of poor quality. The people are not especially helpful, but are a bit appreciative of our attempts at speaking in Russian. We discovered we needed to register within three days of entering Russia at a hotel. This, we found out, was not easy to do if you decided not to stay at a hotel. Bill slept on the floor in another team’s hotel room, so in the morning we had a bit of a run around trying to get a hotel to ‘register’ him without him paying. Eventually our hotel did it because they confused Bill with me as the second person in the room. Jackpot.

That morning we all went to the fancy hotel where the other rally teams were staying and ate at their continental breakfast. They didn’t catch on that we hadn’t paid to stay there. We used the internet to send our families messages of arriving in Russia, and then jointly decided that since we were in Volgograd, a trip to the Stalingrad monument was in order.