(Source: http://asonov.com/goroda-i-strany)

Tver is almost like Bologoe, a stop between Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to the map, it is located closer to Moscow, and its soul tends to Petersburg.

The love of Tver to Petersburg is immutable: people are better there, and the pace of life is closer to the local one. The residents of Tver are proud that the city looks more like the northern capital, the similarities can be found in the city layout of “triaxial structure” and the buildings of the historical centre (there are, however, few of them, for the city was badly damaged in 1941).

The main street - Sovetskaya – is as beautiful, long and inevitable as Nevsky Avenue. Volga goes instead of Neva, Tvertsa and Tmaka – instead of Moika and Fontanka. This is not a fantasy: the Volga embankment was designed in XIX century by Carlo Rossi, and the construction of one of the bridges directly used the elements of the disassembled Petersburg Blagoveshchensky Bridge. It is considered that the embankment itself is made of the remnants of the “coastal granite” from Neva. All the same, the capitals met in one of the most beautiful buildings of ancient Tver, the Travel Palace of Catherine II: Kazakov from Moscow began to build it, and Rossi from St. Petersburg finished the building.

Local residents of Tver do not like those Moscow residents. If you ask why, even tipsy bullies may suddenly remember the ancient confrontation of Moscow and Tver principalities, surprisingly for the interlocutor. Moscow does not cease to give fresh reasons. One of the last of them is “black trains” bringing migrant workers who did not find a job in the capital and criminal gypsies to the city of Tver.

“Undesirable elements” from Moscow is an ancient tradition. In the Soviet years dubious capital residents were expelled to Tver that was then called Kalinin before big events, such as the Olympics. We can also remember Ivan the Terrible who sent the disgraced Metropolitan Philip to Tver.

Modern Tver

There are representatives of all kinds of subcultures, local rockers perform in every decent bar, artists and bikers gather on Trekhsvyatskaya street (an analogue of Moscow Arbat), regardless of weather. Graffiti writers from Moscow and St. Petersburg come here regularly. This is directly reflected on the walls of houses. And the newly created Centre for Contemporary Art in a half-ruined building of the River Station seems to have already remained without funding. Moscow initiatives find it hard to survive, even promising ones.

Tver has not yet turned into the second Perm. The city’s symbol have long been the local native Afanasii Nikitin. It does not matter that the author of one of the first Russian travelogues left Tver to go over the hills and far away and never came back. A monument to him on the embankment of the Volga River is the most famous monument of Tver, and the city brewery makes a good beer called “Afanasii”. An unexpected rival to Nikitin appeared not so long ago – it is Mikhail Krug, the author of the hit song “Vladimirsky Tsentral” (“Vladimir Central Prison”).

Despite the protests of the city residents who do not like prison romance, the monument to the classic of “Russian chanson”, senseless and merciless as it is, was erected in the heart of the city. To be more precise, the singer’s figure “sits” on a bench holding a guitar. You can sit down nearby. Fans do this: sit down, drink, complain for their lives. All this is happening on the Radishcheva Boulevard, which adds some zest to the situation. The idol’s guitar sometimes gets stolen.

Volga looks modest on the territory of Tver, it comes into full swing downstream. However, it is pleasant to look at the city from the water, from the deck of a river boat in summer, to walk through the city garden, to taste “Afanasii” beer, to go to the quarries located within the city limits, to climb the sand hill as tall as a nine-storeyed house and to try and imagine that Tver was once the capital of the Russian land.

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We collected some useful tips for those who are going to visit Tver.

1. The most dangerous city districts of Tver are those located near the railway station, behind the railway and the Pervomayskaya grove.

2. The right name for a city resident is “tverich”.

3. It is cheaper to order an official taxi in Tver than to catch a passing car. The most popular kind of transport in Tver is minibus taxi. Trams run only in the city centre, the bus fleet is small. The roads, as usual, leave much to be desired. Interesting facts: tram drivers “switch” tracks with a tire lever at the crossroads of Kaposhvara square.

4. Fast food restaurants in Tver spring up like mushrooms in the last couple of years. Now they determine the “restaurant map” of the city.

5. The Seliger Lake and the nice Ostashkov are located at a reasonable distance from Tver. Torzhok and Staritsa are also beautiful. There are several interesting estates between Tver and Staritsa: Rayok, Vasilyevo...

6. An ancient church built by the residents of Tver when Adam was a boy is preserved in the village of Gorodnya. The painter Serov lived in the estate of Domotkanovo.

7. Skiers and snowboarders ride from the hills of the village of Chupriyanovka just next to the city. Emmaus is known for its festivals.

8. Traditional autumn entertainment is picking mushrooms in the nearby forests preferred by half of all Tver population. There are really a lot of mushrooms, mushroom tours are even organized in Kalyazinsky district of the region.

9. If you have a car, you can leave the city (not in the direction of Moscow or St Petersburg, for example, in the direction of Bezhetsk), park your car in several kilometers and go on a quiet hunt. Of course, you should observe safety rules of a mushroom picker.