AT THE BOTTOM OF LIFE

There is a legend that at the mouth of a small Nizhny Novgorod river Pochaina lies a stone. Someday, the river imprisoned under the ground will move a stone, break out of the banks and flood the wicked city. Before that happens, let’s take a walk around Pochaina.

Below and below, listening to the roar of the water flow through the manholes of the underground collector, on the terraces and picturesque sites looking out over the Kremlin.

It's a pity we won't be pulled over by the loaders shouting "Stand aside!" rolling beer barrels down the street. But the old Yermolaev brewery still stands, growing into the shore, although its workshops have become restaurants and dance studios.

Here, to the foot of the Kremlin, as if garbage, driven by the flow of the river, flocked and human waste - thousands of barefoots hoped to find wages and food by the river. So grew a little Nizhny Novgorod Alesha Peshkov, the future world-famous writer. For the rest of his life, he remembered the sad song of the residents of the shelter “The sun rises and sets, but in my prison it is dark.” How amazing it is now to walk in these yards and look for the traces of the heroes of his play. Here's a dumpling pelvis for sale. But Ashes is a professional thief and child of a prison, a dreamy romantic. Baron, Satin, Bubnov - "former people."

And next to this kingdom, the bottom is the police department, the city Duma, and the shopping arcades, where the merchants made their capital. In a word, our story will be about barefoots, and those who walked in lacquered stamps, about how close these two worlds are, about fat cockroaches and beautiful impulses of the soul hidden under rags, about fallen women and officials who overstepped, about benefactors at the behest of the soul.

Walking route, 2.5 hours.