Messages

1

Having Fun! / Re: OTMA on horses

« on: April 10, 2019, 05:08:07 PM »

like driving to the grocery store on a riding mower today

Saw that happen in  a movie, but I can't remember the name of said movie.

"The Straight Story" from 1999, about a guy riding through Iowa on a riding mower?

Typically a much-loved Norwegian folk song (really a lullaby for a horse) with music by Edvard Grieg about a working farm horse's existence imagines a farm horse's holiday would consist of just lazily going around the courtyard med veslegutt på nakken - with the wee lad on the neck: Fola, fola Blakken

2

Having Fun! / Re: OTMA on horses

« on: April 10, 2019, 09:25:31 AM »

Of course they were all taught to ride well. The modern equivalent would be learning to drive a car.

Both yes and no. It's interesting to read accounts from that time of people who didnt't know how to ride a horse. I think they were the majority, and horse-riding was primarily linked to the military and the upper classes that dominated the army. The horses most farmers kept for farmwork (and horses used for hauling goods in urban areas, barges on rivers etc.) were not trained to be ridden, so you usually only hear about small children riding them as a treat (and playing at hussars etc.) Much more common was the skill to drive a horse and cart (or a plough or other farm equipment and handle and take care of a horse), as this was alpha and omega in agriculture and in many urban transportation jobs, including cab drivers. If peasants owning a horse were going anywhere far (market, church etc.) they drove their usual farm cart. Bourgeois families had a roofed coach. To come riding would be seen as the modern equivalent of arriving in an unpractical cabriolet sports car. Something for the chosen few. I doubt common people owning a horse even owned a saddle, so they would have to ride bareback on an untrained horse. Surely a sight for the neighbours to laugh at, like driving to the grocery store on a riding mower today.

Riding was probably a more common skill among the populace before the construction of early modern roads and the Industrial Revolution, as old traditions of Easter races among farmers etc. testify to.

3

Having Fun! / Re: Russian Music

« on: April 03, 2019, 08:35:21 AM »

What a beautiful piece.

Amazingly chilling and to the point, isn't it?

Отступать дальше некуда, сзади Японское море,
Здесь кончается наша Россия и мы.
=
There is nowhere left to retreat, beyond the Sea of Japan
Here ends our Russia and here is the end of us.

[...]
Только скорбь Божьей Матери по России моей.
=
Only the grief of the Mother of God for Russia is mine.

4

Servants, Friends and Retainers / Re: Family story about being in service to the Romanov family

« on: April 03, 2019, 08:26:17 AM »

I'm quite prepared for this to be a family story that can't be proved or that may have been embellished but would really love to try and find out more information if possible.

It could very well be an embellished tale of an ancestor working as a nanny for more distant members of the huge Romanov family or for members of the Russian aristocracy or rich bourgeois.

5

Having Fun! / Re: Russian Music

« on: March 28, 2019, 10:19:25 PM »

I'm sure I've heard this tragically beautiful song before, in Romanov movies and videos, but I've never paid attention to it untill I stumbled upon it on YouTube:

Всё теперь против нас = All is now against us, by Yuriy Arkadyevich Borisov.

This White Russian lament was actually not written during or just after the Civil War, but by a Soviet citizen (born in 1944) in internal emigration.

6

Having Fun! / Re: Youtube favourites. (NON-Romanov & Royality videos)

« on: March 17, 2019, 02:33:41 PM »

That's a boring version.

Hey, I didn't make the thing, I just posted a link to it.

I know! I'd never criticize it so bluntly if you had put your heart and soul into it :-) I reserve that for badly researched Romanov fan fiction.

7

Having Fun! / Re: Youtube favourites. (NON-Romanov & Royality videos)

« on: March 17, 2019, 04:40:30 AM »

The Bonnie Blue Flag - instrumental

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsyXJ-tVle0

That's a boring version. This one is much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqUEeGg4Ys

Modern Norwegian folk (traditional Norwegian with a dash of American country) that makes you wanna dance: Staut: Bekken (The Brook) / Sjå sole (Look at the sun)
The song is a description of an idyllic summer day.

Sjå sole, e må myse
Tenk så gøtt me ska ha det i lag
Ligge mjukt i ei eng, som gjør nytta si som seng
Bærre gå hånd i hånd ein sommardag.
=
Look at the sun, I have to squint
Imagine how good we will have it together
Laying softly in a meadow which doubles as a bed
Just walking hand in hand a summer day.

8

Nicholas II / Re: 120 years of the First International Peace Conference (1899-2019)

« on: March 16, 2019, 04:10:02 PM »

Delete this thread, there is already one about this topic: http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=586.0

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Having Fun! / Re: Youtube favourites. (NON-Romanov & Royality videos)

« on: March 10, 2019, 05:54:01 AM »

A song from another huge empire:

Fantastic Chinese pop song from a roadmovie about crossing China by car. I stumbled upon it as the soundtrack of a YouTube video about long-distance cycling in China: 平凡之路 = Píngfán zhīlù = The Ordinary Road) by Pu Shu (朴树).

Lyrics with translation

10

Imperial Transportation / Re: Trips to the UK aboard the Standart

« on: March 10, 2019, 05:44:21 AM »

Does anyone have any detailed info about these trips?

Especially how long the voyage would be from Russia, but also details of the trips themselves.

When they visited was it primarily a state occasion or a family one?

This thread has useful information: Chronology of the Travels of Nicholas II as Tsar and Tsarevich

The trips were primarily family occasions, but heavily publicized, with lots of press attention. They were seen as political, as it was assumed by the public that the related monarchs discussed politics, primarily foreign politics, even though they didn't do much of that, according to diaries and memoirs.

11

Palaces in St. Petersburg / Re: Poëlle palace

« on: March 02, 2019, 03:29:16 PM »

Thank you so much for your quick reply. I'd never even heard of this palace before this.

You are welcome. I'd never heard of it either, so it was interesting to discover it, and other palaces involved in the Battle of the Palaces, like majestic Tsaritsyno in Moscow.

12

Having Fun! / Re: are the British imperial days romanticised?

« on: March 02, 2019, 02:21:09 PM »

I guess any thought of changing the name back to Berlin ended with World War II.

They should have changed the name to Boloto, which is the Russian and Ukrainian word for swamp, which probably is the meaning of the Slavic place-name Berlin. (Notice that Berlin and boloto have b-l in common.) Canada has a large population with Ukrainian ancestry, don't you? Bolotino sounds nice too, like an Italian fashion brand or a Russian country estate.

13

Palaces in St. Petersburg / Re: Poëlle palace

« on: March 02, 2019, 11:15:04 AM »

"panorama of Poëlle palace on the banks of the Neva (between St. Petersburg and Schlüsselburg (Shlisselburg) )"

Does anyone know where this palace might be located in the St. Petersburg area?  It's possible it might have been destroyed since the 18th century.  I've had a good search around google but had no luck in finding this place and don't know of any books on the palaces of Catherine II.

It must be Pella Palace (Russian: Пеллинский дворец - Pellinskiy dvorets) in the town of Otradnoye, 30 km south-east of St. Petersburg, along the Neva. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pella_Palace The manor was originally called Pallila, presumably a Finnish name, but Catherine the Great renamed it Pella, after Alexander the Great's Macedonian home town, when she bought and built it for her grandson Alexander. So it was intended as the "original Alexander Palace", but was destroyed in the so-called Battle of the Palaces

14

Balkan Royal Families / Re: Tzar Ferdinand of Bulgaria and his family

« on: February 28, 2019, 06:48:06 AM »

Svetabel wrote in another thread, regarding Reuss/Prussia marriage of Princesss Victoria Margaret and Prince Heinrich XXXIII Reuss(Eleonore's fist cousin) that her mother, Luise Sophie, sister of the Empress "didn't like a sophisticated surroundings of the Reuss Princes, as she considered them too arrogant and insisted that the life of her family was very simple and unpretentious."

Interesting that Luise Sophie's family background (Danish, South German with a dash of British, reduced circumstances due to exile and some Prussian mehr sein als schein') contrasted with the Reuss' East Central German Duodez-style Standesdünkel.

15

Having Fun! / Re: are the British imperial days romanticised?

« on: February 27, 2019, 05:13:39 PM »

Two months before the start of the First World War.

Yes, while they still were Princes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Dukes of Jülich, Cleves and Berg, also Angria and Westphalia, Landgrave in Thuringia, Margrave of Meissen, Princely Count of Henneberg, Count of the Mark and Ravensberg, Lord of Ravenstein and Tonna, et cetera.

Here is a famous example of romanticising the gentry's easy summer life in the good, old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (by an anti-Russian writer in Parisian exile): Youtube: Polonaise from "Pan Tadeusz"

Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie;
Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie,
Kto cię stracił.
=
Lithuania, my fatherland! You are like health;
How much you must be valued, will only discover
The one who has lost you.
[....]
Mężczyznom dano wódkę; wtenczas wszyscy siedli,
I chołodziec litewski milcząc żwawo jedli.
=
The men were given vodka; and all took their seat,
And Lithuanian cold borscht all proceeded to eat.

From Poland's national poem: "Pan Tadeusz, czyli Ostatni zajazd na Litwie" = Sir Thaddeus, or the Last Foray in Lithuania.