Gdansk Pilgrimage 2018 (6): A somber (and contested) Museum of the Second World War, followed by tasty Baltic fishies.

I've prefaced the travel narrative of our visit to Poland (itself backdated to the actual days we were there) with a series called Eight Days of Gdansk, which provides background on a European destination that's scandalously little known to Americans.

Previously: Polish hoops, mustard soup and bison lager.

Poland has experienced a tumultuous history. Humankind has tended to be a violent lot, and in a strictly European context, a disproportionate amount of suffering has centered on the areas located between the Tatra Mountains to the south and the Baltic Sea to the north.

From east to west, across several historical boundaries of the country we now refer to as Poland, the terrain generally is flat and indefensible, crisscrossed time and again by invading armies. For hundreds of years the geographical locales where Poles live often have been occupied and exploited by powerful neighbors, one after the next.

These facts contribute to the national identity of the Polish people every bit as much as America's expansionist "manifest destiny," which took shape in our backyard owing to seemingly inexhaustible lands westward, begging to be seized. In Europe, Poland was the place always up for grabs.

All this helps to explain why, when the Law and Justice political party came to power in Poland in 2015, a museum about World War II in Gdansk already well on its way to completion suddenly became a pawn in a struggle of viewpoints, with the new populist government applying the brakes to the museum's autonomy, contending that the story being told there was in need of immediate revision.

Something like this: The global history of the Second World War is important, but it's even more important for any WWII museum located in Poland to regularly remind visitors that the Polish nation has drawn the short straw, time and again -- a state of affairs beginning long before 1939.

There is much true about this. Poland was partitioned more than a century prior to World War I, then became that nasty war's main battleground for Germans and Russians to pulverize each other. At war's end, Poland reappeared on the map thanks to savvy lobbying of America's president, Woodrow "14 Points" Wilson. Predictably, Poland's newly drawn borders were disputed, necessitating a half-dozen brief skirmishes with neighbors following the big war.

One of these fights, the invasion of Poland by the Bolsheviks, was highly significant for the remainder of the continent. The Soviets were hurled back, and Poland waited for thanks that never came, because the victors of the western alliance were too busy sticking it to the Germans via the Treaty of Versailles.

Directly or indirectly, this helped give Adolf Hitler a receptive audience among Germans, and after a scant 20 years of comparative peace, Poland was in the cross-hairs again as Hitler prepared to seize what he viewed as Lebensraum (living space) to the East, to be confiscated from the Poles -- who, after all, were only sub-human Slavs.

The Nazis invaded in 1939, with what would become World War II's opening engagements being fought in Danzig (later to become Gdansk) at the Polish Post Office and the harbor fortifications at Westerplatte. Poland was quickly crushed by Hitler on one side and an expedient Stalin on the other, and again the country disappeared from the map.

When it was over, much of Poland was smoldering ruins, occupied by the victorious Red Army, and having lost 18% of its pre-war population.

Almost all of Poland's Jewish population is included in this figure, and even more horrifying, many of the worst Nazi concentration camps were located on Polish territory, which meant that human beings constantly were being brought there for the sole purpose of being murdered. The extent to which some Poles  assisted the Germans in the implementation of the Holocaust is a topic that will have to wait.

I refer readers to Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, and move on to the post-war era.

After the Second World War ended, Poland's borders were shifted west, and ethnic cleansing began. Germans finding themselves in Poland were expelled, as were Poles residing to the east in places like Latvia, Lithuania and Belorussia. As Günter Grass describes in his novel The Tin Drum, incoming Poles usually were assigned houses and apartments where departed Germans had lived; if the German owners hadn't yet vacated their homes, they soon would.

Four decades of Communism was next, and when it finally collapsed in 1990, Poland could begin trying to make sense of it all. I believe this process is still underway, and I've already written about the controversies surrounding the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk.

Eight Days of Gdansk, November 1: World War II and Gdansk.

As with the European Solidarity Centre, which is visible a short distance away, the Museum of the Second World War is a striking architectural statement. The guided tour begins with World War I, describes the interwar period and the factors leading to renewed conflict, and provides an overview of the military campaigns. Much detail is devoted to the wartime milieu for civilians, and the Holocaust is given its due.

As with our day at the European Solidarity Centre, I'm choosing to present the photos with little in the way of explanation. It's a visual collage. One thing I'd recommend to future visitors to Gdansk: if you're going to both of these excellent museums, do the Museum of the Second World War first, and then the European Solidarity Centre.

And be prepared to have an emotional reaction at both.

A drink was necessary afterward.

Inevitably, the time came to eat. We'd walked past Rybka Na Wartkiej several times, as emblazoned with "Fish and Chips" in English. Early Sunday evening was declared zero hour, and far from being some sort of themed British kitsch, Rybka Na Wartkiej turned out to be a great place to eat Baltic seafood.

For starters, fish soup and herring marinated in a variety of spices. Marvelous.

That little glass in front of the Tyskie, well, that's Żubrówka Vodka, otherwise known as bison (or buffalo) grass vodka; it's an herbal vodka made from rye, and flavored with a tincture of bison grass (Hierochloe odorata). A blade of the grass generally is put in each bottle. Delicious with the herring and soup; Diana liked it, too.

Haddock was the fish of choice, and I'm exhausting the superlatives.

Rybka Na Wartkiej serves Tyskie beer, and Tyskie is an SABMiller brewery. I haven't bothered to research this any further, but my guess is Książęce is the Tyskie branch charged with brewing specialties. The Black Lager and Hefeweizen both were more than respectable.

We went for an evening walk and picked up a few bottles of beer to take back to the room. Some of the photos are blurry.

Then again, so were we.

Look, it's a Pilsner Urquell bar. These sorts of things still impress me.

Next: Wrapping up Gdansk with a harbor boat ride and boar pierogis.

From Food & Dining (Spring 2018, Vol. 59): My interview with Bert Beveridge, founder of Tito's Handmade Vodka.

When the current issue of Food & Dining Magazine comes out, it is my habit to glance back at the previous quarterly edition and reprise my contributions.

In this instance, it's Spring 2018 (Vol. 59; Feb-Mar-Apr), and my profile of the Chef Space kitchen incubator, and interview with Bert "Tito" Beveridge.

First up, the vodka maker. The Chef Space profile will appear in a separate post.

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THE MULE’S FROM MOSCOW, BUT THE VODKA’S STRICTLY LONE STAR.

Tito’s Handmade Vodka became the top-selling spirits brand in America by keeping it simple and fostering an enthusiastic fan base.

Vodka remains huge in the United States, and yet the libation’s perceived essence as a colorless, odorless spirit tends to deprive it of the adulation inspired by whiskeys, gins and cognacs.

To me, the 20th-century history of vodka in America makes perfect sense in a geopolitical, Boris and Natasha, ex-Cold War sort of way, seeing as vodka was barely known here until after World War II, when a brand called Smirnoff occupied a leading position in the liquor trade.

Ironically, Russian imagery propelled a popular cocktail known as the Moscow Mule -- the Volga Boatman never really caught on -- and Smirnoff inspired countless Slavic knock-offs spanning the gamut from Popov to Kamchatka to Dark Eyes (a famous Russian folk song).

What better tactic to one-up the Soviets than boldly appropriate their national beverage for capitalism’s greater good, whether as partner to an ocean of tonic water or a willing enabler for countless restorative Bloody Marys?

In recent years vodka has exploded past all former limitations of national origin and price point to become as diverse and specialized as any other type of tipple, but aside from waffle-flavored vodkas distilled according to ancient Druid techniques, exactly how did a regular guy from Texas create a craft vodka that recently toppled the perennial powerhouse Smirnoff as America’s number one spirits brand, hurdling other famous names like Bacardi, Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo, and in the process completely reordering the American vodka hierarchy?

I’m speaking of Bert “Tito” Beveridge and his creation, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, which dates to humble beginnings two decades ago in Austin, Texas.

Tito’s Handmade Vodka’s success is even more unique given that it is the sole product of an independent distilling company, without the corporate reach or pocketbook of companies like Brown-Forman or Diageo.

Consumers love the Tito’s Handmade Vodka back story, and the enthusiasm extends to bartenders, retail managers and wholesale liquor professionals like Scott Clark of Southern Glazer’s.

“Tito’s is now the standard, with undeniable deals in marketing, point of sale and product support,” said Clark. “In the decade I’ve been selling wine and spirits in Southern Indiana, I’ve never seen this massive a scale of growth in any product, especially in the vodka category.

“It’s family-owned, handmade and gluten-free – but most importantly, Tito’s has become the preferred flavor profile when my customers think about drinking vodka.”

Beveridge was raised in San Antonio and graduated from the University of Texas. He worked in the oil, gas and mortgage businesses before concluding that his hobby of infusing vodkas with flavorings (given as gifts to friends) might actually form the basis of a career.

For Beveridge, “handmade” meant hands-on. He famously grappled with government bureaucrats who hadn’t read their own overstuffed rulebooks, maxed numerous credit cards, cobbled together a still worthy of the surgeons on M*A*S*H, and got to work fashioning vodka from corn.

Sales of Tito’s Handmade Vodka have risen from 12,000 bottles in 1997 to 44 million in 2016, helping to explain Beveridge’s 2017 debut on the Forbes 400 list or richest Americans; with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion, he ranks 324th.

Earlier this year, I had the chance to ask Beveridge a few questions by e-mail.

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F & D: When you were young, before you got into the spirits business, what did vodka mean to you – or what did you think it meant at the time? Have you expanded on this notion, or reinvented it?

Tito: In the early 1990s, I lived in Austin and worked in the mortgage business when I started making flavored vodka for my friends as Christmas presents. I was at a party one time and a stranger came up to me and said, ‘Hey you’re the vodka guy’ and I was like ‘No, I am the mortgage guy.’ That’s when I kinda started thinking that this guy’s telling me I need to go sell my flavored vodkas, and this was the first time I really started thinking seriously about it. Today vodka is my means to make the world a better place.

F & D: Napoleon supposedly said “Geography is destiny.” How important is the heritage of Texas, your birthplace, in the brand identity of Tito’s Handmade Vodka?

Tito: Texas is home. I was born and raised here, I established the first legal distillery here and it’s my friends and family here in Texas who all helped me get to where I am today.

F & D: What’s the advantage of a pot still versus a column still?

Tito: Our process, the pot still process, is similar to those used to make fine single malt scotches and high-end French cognacs. It requires more skill and effort than other processes, but it's well worth it.

F & D: To my taste buds Tito’s Handmade Vodka is remarkably smooth with a slightly sweet edge that I’d attribute to corn. Does corn make a difference in the flavor profile?

Tito: Since our vodka is distilled from corn, it is naturally gluten free and has a smooth, slightly sweet mouth feel. Some producers add a little bit of mash back into the spirit after distillation, which would add gluten content into an otherwise gluten-free distillate (if using wheat as the base), but I don’t do that, regardless. We’ve found that this flavor profile complements both cocktails and neat drinks just the same.

F & D: I don’t recall seeing a television ad for Tito’s Handmade Vodka, but years ago I was intrigued by seeing ads in the New York Times. Your chosen style of “guerrilla” marketing as a way of competing with the bigger bankrolls is intriguing. Has word of mouth been a big part of the vodka’s success?

Tito: You’re correct. We’ve never done a TV ad and aren’t planning on any in the future. We attribute a large part of our success to our fans. Back in the day, my family and friends used to come to the distillery and help me bottle the vodka. At the end of the day I’d send them home with a case and ask them to pass it along to their friends. Then they’d pass a bottle to their friends and so on. Eventually people started asking for us at their local bars and they didn’t stop asking until we were behind the bar. Now with social media, we have a direct line to our customers 24 hours a day. It’s allowed us to connect with our fans all over the world. We like to think of it as word of mouth on a much larger scale.

F & D: Is there any part of the ascent that you’d do differently if given a second chance?

Tito: I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, so I wouldn’t change a thing. You know, there are small challenges every day, especially thinking back to those initial days of building the distillery. A lot of people told me it couldn’t be done, but I knew what I wanted to do. I used my previous failures as my strength and didn’t stop, and twenty years later, here we are.

F & D: Have you thought about legacies? Where do you see the company ten years from now, and is there a strategy for staying on top -- or is just being near the top enough?

Tito: For me, I hope the “legacy” goes beyond the vodka. Back when I started this, I also started supporting charity events around Austin one bottle at a time, and gave away a ridiculous amount of vodka. We’ve grown a lot since then and in every new place we were able to reciprocate by pouring that love back into the people and organizations that nurture, support and empower their local communities and causes. Last year we were able to use this medium to give to local, national and global charities supporting disaster relief, the environment, military and veterans, health care and medical research, food and beverage industry workers, arts and culture organizations, the LGBTQ community and the truest form of love on the planet: our pets.

F & D: Speaking of pets, your love for dogs is obvious and touching. Can you explain “Vodka for Dog People”?

Tito: Our passion for animals goes back to the first days at the distillery. At the time, my only companion at the distillery was my German Shepherd mix, DogJo. DogJo's food became a hit with the neighborhood strays, and I began to feed the dogs who would come and go. Eventually I started getting the strays spayed and neutered at the nearby Emancipet, an organization that offers low-cost spay, neuter and vaccination services to dogs and cats. Today, we still work with Emancipet and still have our dogs with us at the distillery and in the office. We can’t really imagine it any other way. Two years ago, we made our passion official with the Vodka for Dog People program. This vision is to unite with our friends, fans and partners to better the lives of pets and their families far and wide.

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So, how has Beveridge done it?

Tito’s Handmade Vodka’s success owes to quality distilling, hard work, and maybe even a little luck, but it’s community-building and shared values among the brand’s friends and fans that bring them back for the next round.

Tito’s Handmade Vodka 
Tito’s at Facebook
Tito’s at Instagram 
Vodka for Dog People 

LIVE TO EAT (AND DRINK): "Three Days of Vodka With Gary Shteyngart."

I've been researching vodka for a future free-lance article, and was thinking back to the unexpectedly tasty way straight firewater accompanies little nibbles. In the case of Russia, these are called zakuski, which I recalled in this installment of the Euro '87 travelogue.

Soviet restaurants certainly had menus, though they tended to be approximations, particularly in the case of foreigners who spoke no Russian. Even if the restaurant was able to serve a dozen main courses, the selection likely would be narrowed to simpler options, like either beef or fish.

Probably everyone involved understood the nature of the exercise, and you'd take what you were served, beginning with drinks and zakuski. In Russia, zakuski are appetizers both hot and cold, though often featuring pickled and smoked vegetables, cheese and fish.

The practice of zakuski apparently originated among the landowning classes as a reflection of Russia's vastness and a mutually beneficial obligation to provide hospitality to travelers. In short, snacks and vodka were kept at the ready. These would sustain tired visitors until the kitchen could be animated to produce a full meal.

As meant to be taken with vodka, zakuski often proved to be the high point of restaurant meals in the Soviet Union.

Diners were given ample time to graze the zakuski and empty their bottles before the indifferent entree would appear, usually only after diners were sufficiently well lubricated to be grateful for belly mortar irrespective of quality. There'd usually be dessert, often ice cream.

Bopping around in search of information, I happened upon this old article at Slate -- and it's a hoot. I've read Shteyngart's books The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, and he's a fine writer. So is Troy Patterson.

Read this and know what a Russian vodka session is like. These days, it isn't likely I could keep up, though never say нет.

Three Days of Vodka With Gary Shteyngart, by Troy Patterson

A boozy trip down memory lane—and through Russian history—with the author of Little Failure.

 ... Gary Shteyngart picks up a menu printed with the Russian Vodka Room’s logo, in which the savage hammer and sickle garnish a cocktail served up at the center of a Soviet star. Across the room, a fat man limbers his fingers and eyes a black piano. Gary Shteyngart receives his brief: The job tonight is to help me explain to myself and everyone exactly what vodka is.

Of course, everyone knows what vodka is. Defined by law to be a neutral spirit “as tasteless and odorless as possible,” it is the best-selling liquor in the U.S.—“the backbone of the spirits industry.” You don’t need Gary Shteyngart to tell you why such a bland booze should be so successful, but he’s here, so why not? “It’s utility. Vodkas mix well because they have so little personality.”

Around the world, vodka is an icon and emblem of Russia, where it is variously lyricized and decried, both a poem and a problem. There could have been vodka without Russia; both Poland and Ukraine have staked plausible claims of historical precedence. But there could not have been the grandeur of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, nor the evil of the USSR, nor the mystery of the steppes, nor the mystique of the onion dome, without vodka. “It’s the curse and liberation of Russia,” as the British writer Colin Thubron once put it. Gary thinks of Russia’s relationship with vodka in parallel terms: “It’s very Homer-Simpsonian: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

The Russian Vodka Room lists 44 commercial vodkas on its menu, including Smirnoff (the pioneer licensed for U.S. consumption in the 1930s), Tito’s (distilled in Texas), and Ciroc (from Diddy, because every third celebrity has a vodka these days; recent weeks have brought news of labels launched by a retired Piston, a former Patriot, and New Hampshire’s Old Man in the Mountain). “The difference among vodkas is not that great,” Gary says, “but Russian Standard is the best. It doesn’t have a story about how it’s been triple-filtered through a diamond in a rhinoceros's asshole, but it gets the job done.”

We, however, are here to drink the house-infused stuff. You may have gotten the idea—what with recent atrocities regarding vodkas flavored to taste of whipped cream and peanut butter and shopping-mall cinnamon buns—that infused vodkas are relatively new and very often gross, but distillers have been at it since the 1400s, and there is nobility in the tradition. Ordering in Russian, Shteyngart gets us a 7-ounce carafe of the horseradish and a few bites to eat.

The vodka arrives. He pours it but does not drink. “We’re gonna wait for some toasts.” The booze cannot go into his mouth until a proper salute has flowed from his heart—and the drinks cannot go down the hatch until the barman puts out our food, our zakuski: “that which you follow the vodka with.” The most important part of Russian drinking is Russian eating. A zakuska is a sine qua non, with an exception allowed for very tough economic times, when it’s acceptable to chase the vodka with a sniff of your own overcoat ...

30 years ago today: A fine meal at the Hotel Moskva.

Hotel Moskva, 1930s.

(Previously: 30 years ago today: A taste of Moscow, with occasional beers for sustenance. Portions of the following have been adapted from my 1985 Leningrad tale)

The price of our SSTS tour of the USSR and Poland in 1987 included meals. Given that we were "youth and students" on a budget outing, I expected little, and wasn't once disappointed.

One sack lunch sticks in my mind. There was a hard-boiled egg a la Dr. Seuss (it was green), a heel of bread and a hunk of congealed sausage.

I wolfed them down. We drinkers understand the value of a proper foundation.

As for the needs of others, in the sense of dietary restrictions? This simply wasn't a concept, and vegetarians surely would have starved unless they ate cheese.

As for food and dining on the part of the citizenry, there seemed to be a noticeable absence of restaurants. Of course, with almost all economic activity controlled by the state, there'd have been no way to be entrepreneurial.

In a country where famine had occurred within living memory, food supply definitely was an obsession. In a country with a centralized economy, food supply was something undertaken very differently than at home in the States.

It isn’t that Moscow's inhabitants didn’t dine outside their homes. Many received their main meal at lunchtime, as served at their workplaces, and they also took quick bites at any number of “people’s” or “worker’s” cafeterias, many serving soup, potatoes and dumplings.

As a guidebook colorfully stated, these eateries were “dirt cheap and dirty,” and while they didn't stand out at first, they definitely were there, seemingly allocated by population. Having arrived in Moscow via Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Hungary, I'd already become enamored of these sorts of places.

Parts is parts, and sausage never scared me. Especially in Hungary, cafeterias punched far above their weight for the price.

On my first day in Moscow, with time to kill, I grabbed a bowl of pelmeni in grayish-brown sauce from an inconspicuous cafeteria-style eatery. Pelmeni are classic Russian ear-shaped dumplings roughly the size of small won tons, made of unleavened dough with a meaty filling.

It's best not to ask any more questions.

There didn't seem to be a kitchen, strongly implying that the day's pelmeni were delivered each morning from the Central Moscow Pelmeni Factory, and when depleted of dumplings, the door would be locked.

Relative anonymity was the norm. A sign out front identified the establishment with just a name and a number: Pelmeni No. 34. After all, when the government owns everything, everything is a chain by definition, and marketing isn't really necessary when choice is intentionally limited.

Soviet “sit-down” restaurants comparable to the sort Americans were accustomed to seeing by the half-dozen at every interstate interchange were regarded by ordinary Russians as places for special occasions, like weddings and anniversaries.

Above a certain classification, formal restaurants had the reputation and appearance of being inaccessible to normal human beings. In essence, all their seats were reserved, all of the time.

There’d be a sign stating the restaurant was entirely booked, even though a glance through the window showed most (sometimes all) seats empty. A doorman would guard the door as though he were defending the vaults at Ft. Knox.

Only later did I learn the key to breaking the code, because in fact, anyone could phone the restaurant or visit earlier in the day and make a reservation, so long as a wedding wasn't taking place. It really was that simple. However, in the beginning this wasn’t evident. The game for westerners was all about bribing one’s way inside.

Hence the value of western cigarettes and toothpaste. So it was that four of us (myself, Barrie, Nick and Nat) decided to squander a half-inch of Barr's black market ruble windfall on an evening's merriment.

Our choice was the cavernous restaurant at the Hotel Moskva, a monstrous 1,000-room structure dating from 1935, situated near Red Square and the Kremlin, squatting massively astride what seemed to be a dozen lanes of wide highway that never had more than a handful of Ladas chugging through them, but apparently came in handy as a May Day parade ground.

The sheer size and scale of hotels like Moskva, Ukraina, Intourist and Rossiya bear witness to two fundamentally important points. First, that the Soviets constantly invoked sheer size and scale to prove they could create a man-made world on a par with capitalists.

Perhaps more importantly, in a gated society with the number of outside visitors strictly rationed, it was imperative to monitor them, and easier to do so in a 500-room hotel than scattered hostelries.

Of the four hotels I've mentioned here, three have been demolished since the fall of communism: Intourist, Rossiya and Moskva, although the Moskva recently was rebuilt with the same 1935 facade, preserving the contours of the streetscape leviathan with modern interior amenities.

Curiously, I remember nothing at all about how we gained access to the restaurant. It surely involved a small gift to the doorman, as we hadn't made reservations, and of course every chair had an empty seat suit sitting on it.

Once inside, the guesswork would have commenced. Soviet restaurants certainly had menus, though they tended to be approximations, particularly in the case of foreigners who spoke no Russian. Even if the restaurant was able to serve a dozen main courses, the selection likely would be narrowed to simpler options, like either beef or fish.

Probably everyone involved understood the nature of the exercise, and you'd take what you were served, beginning with drinks and zakuski. In Russia, zakuski are appetizers both hot and cold, though often featuring pickled and smoked vegetables, cheese and fish.

The practice of zakuski apparently originated among the landowning classes as a reflection of Russia's vastness and a mutually beneficial obligation to provide hospitality to travelers. In short, snacks and vodka were kept at the ready. These would sustain tired visitors until the kitchen could be animated to produce a full meal.

As meant to be taken with vodka, zakuski often proved to be the high point of restaurant meals in the Soviet Union.

Diners were given ample time to graze the zakuski and empty their bottles before the indifferent entree would appear, usually only after diners were sufficiently well lubricated to be grateful for belly mortar irrespective of quality. There'd usually be dessert, often ice cream.

My globetrotting cousin used to tell a wonderful story about his Moscow dining experience, which unfolded adjacent to a table occupied by two heavily drinking Russian men who obviously were Communist Party officials, judging by their imperious attitudes and outdated 1950s-era suits.

When their huge bowls of ice cream appeared following enough vodka to stun an elephant, one of the men promptly passed out -- face down, straight into his ice cream.

The other one shrugged, reaching across the table to save his friend from drowning by grabbing a patch of thinning hair and removing the hair's head from the bowl, depositing the head and dripping ice cream onto the table, then continuing to eat his own ice cream between gulps of the bottle's last dregs.    

Indeed, the drinks list at Soviet restaurants tended to be slim; perhaps juice, mineral water and sparkling wine to complement the ubiquitous vodka, though oddly, seldom beer. Vodka was the choice, and it is vitally important to remember that one should never try to keep pace with Russians drinking vodka.

They’ve been doing it since they were babies, via tubes inserted through their swaddling.

We spent several hours at the Hotel Moskva. I doubt the check totaled more than the equivalent of $50. I think we paid in dollars for a cab ride to the hotel. Nothing else about it is coming back to me these many years later, although I'm quite sure my face didn't scream for ice cream.

We were rock stars in the worker's paradise.

Next: The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, a renowned monastery in what was then Zagorsk.