Which Bykovo?

When we finally found the church, Our Lady of Vladimir (1789), I was overcome with a feeling of awe and disappointment simultaneously. It stood erect, beautifully restored in all its Neo-Gothic structure in an enclosed area of overgrown grass, surrounded by garbage of all kinds, and debris. I couldn't help feeling I had landed unexpectedly at a post-bombed site where this majestic symbol dating from the late 17^th century had survived.

A sleek black Mercedes decked with ribbons, flowers and gigantic, interlaced, gold wedding rings stood outside the gate prophesying a wedding. I wondered what it would be like to be dressed up in one’s finest on such a significant day, stepping over the garbage, choosing where to step, all decked up in an extremely expensive dress and matching high-heeled shoes. A bride could be seen coming out of one of the few houses scattered opposite the church – possibly a native of the village.

It had been an ordeal to get there so I was determined not to let the scenery, which turned out not to be as picture-perfect as I'd expected it to be, ruin my day and trip. On a very hot Saturday at the beginning of the summer, as people had started going to their dachas at weekends, I thought I’d make a cultural trip out of Moscow to this church I'd seen pictures of but knew little about. We made it to the train station just in time to make a run for the train which was about to close its doors, found a seat and settled in for the 50-minute ride.

It was a hot, noisy, uncomfortable affair. Once the train got out of the urban area though, the abundance of vegetation provided a bit of respite through the small windows. The noise however, never relented. The metal-on-metal screech from the train wheels on the rails was constant – so loud was it that the announcements for the next station were obliterated in the process. Fortunately, the platforms were visibly labeled, possibly as a precaution of the afore-mentioned situation, so we followed those and got off at the right station, or what we thought was the right station.

We asked for directions and followed them. The walk from the station took us through surroundings not representative of Europe in the least – open bags of garbage strewn around, empty bottles everywhere, muddy roads, pot-holed tarred roads…Teatralnaya Street was an unpaved back road with houses in disrepair. One such house was no different from the Adams' Family residence. It was just as spooky, as it looked lived-in and abandoned at the same time. My mouth was agape the whole time and I couldn't help wondering about the contrast between this place and other European towns and villages I'd seen all over. Were the people of a different race, I would easily have believed that I had been teleported to a place in Africa or somewhere in South East Asia. 

From the station at Bykovo, we could see some domes representative of a church although it did not look Gothic. We thought the town was in that direction and headed there. We were not surprised to find out that the church wasn't the one we were looking for – it would have been too easy. It still made for a nice photo session. The surroundings were well-kempt, with a beautiful war memorial where flowers had been deposited. A few ladies in scarves seemed to be guarding the area. We asked for directions to the one we were looking for and were directed to take a bus, ride for a certain amount of time and then ask for more directions after we got off. We asked if we weren't in Bykovo since we were being directed to another town altogether. We certainly were in Bykovo, but we needed to go to a different Bykovo. There was no telling whether it was the same town separated by other smaller ones, or whether they were different towns.

City-slickers as we were, in need of some exercise, we decided to forgo the bus and make our way there on foot. At a T, we saw the bus we had been advised to get on and decided to follow it. How hard can it be? Our walk took us through a market, a downtown area which reminded me of some of the small towns I’d seen in Kerala, in the south of India, and finally to an abandoned airport area fenced off amid high security with red signs and exclamation marks everywhere. We got the message. Unable to go further, we had to retrace our steps. At this point, we thought we had walked around the whole town. 

It was getting hot. We needed a drink and a bathroom and settled on finding one before trying for the church again. It was noon. We’d walked around for more than an hour and had no idea where to find this church despite the help available on all the modern gadgets in our possession.

We found a snack bar which provided us with all we needed. After the well-needed rest, we set off again, this time to get the bus. From the bus stop, we saw another church worthy of a visit and headed there. It really was worth the stop. It was a wooden structure ornamented with several domes, most of which were of the usual blue and gold design. The grounds were litter-free, and the church shone in all its glory. The letters XB were emblazoned at every entrance symbolizing Christ has risen. We walked around, took some pictures, admired its beautiful architecture and set off again on our quest. Two churches and a high security airport area down, but our goal seemed nowhere in sight.

Back at the bus stop, we realized we would have to wait for an hour in the heat and dirt. I suggested finding a taxi to end our misery. The driver of the first and only taxi we approached agreed to take us to our destination. His fare, which we'd arranged before settling in, made me suspicious, so I asked my friend to make sure he knew where we were going and how to get there. He assented eagerly pointing at the church we had just walked from which was literally a 10-second ride. Why he ever thought that two able-bodied people walking around would need a taxi for a distance of 50 meters is beyond me. Once it was clarified that we had just come from that church and were going to the Gothic church, he “realized his mistake” and said he couldn't take us there because his taxi was on order by another customer. I looked at the box of fresh, hot pizza he'd just placed on the passenger seat before starting the car and thought, “any means to make an easy buck.” 

Once again I was right – it would have been too easy. He did tell us though where to find a taxi. Eventually, we did, and this one charged us about the same fare as our pizza-ready previous driver. We ascertained he was taking us to the right place and hopped in. When we finally got to our destination, we realized that with our city-cockiness of not needing any means of transportation, we would not have made it before the end of the day, and even if we had taken the bus, it was still a long walk from the bus stop which the heat would have rendered very unpleasant. All the same, we had made it to the well-desired destination, and there it stood in all its glory. The initial shock worn off, I set off to explore, but not having a scarf and not willing to be disrespectful, I could only take a peek inside.

The façade is fitted with an extraordinary design of a curved, two-way staircase from the sides, meeting at the top entrance with turrets on each side. A walk around the manor church, as it is considered, reveals sculptures of possibly famous people carved into the stone walls. Columns supporting pyramid-like structures, arches big and small, windows which in the past may have been of stained-glass make up the sides of the church elevating it to its level of grandeur. A peek from the door revealed an altar with gold adornments and a very clean church with a few people lighting candles. Mass had probably ended given that it was past one when we got there. Away from the church stood a tall bell tower which would have shone more had its surrounding not been littered to the extent that they were.

After the wild goose chase which culminated in achieving my goal, I was satisfied with what I had seen. It is certainly worth a visit as an out of town trip to see a curiosity. It is certainly not a tourist attraction which is why it was difficult to find and possibly why no one thought the surroundings were worth the trouble keeping immaculate. All in all, it had been a good day out. We’d seen the church and it was time to go back to Moscow where my neighborhood, which I had never had anything nice to say about had all of a sudden taken on the appearance of 5^th Avenue.

It had been a long day and it was time to get back home. When the gypsy cab dropped us off at the station, we realized it wasn't where we had come in. A lot of the explanation from the driver as to why we were at this station got lost in the heat and my tiredness. I just needed to get back on the train to “civilization.” For the first time, unlike on other occasions, I was relieved to be back in Moscow and was thankful I was not one of the regular commuters on that train.