Russia Bye Bye

The bags are packed. Will be picked up soon and driven to the airport for a flight to Copenhagen, continuing with a jump to Göteborg and finally bus to Jönköping.

This month has been absolutely amazing and one of the best times of our lifes. We were expecting an awesome journey but the result exceeds our wildest expectations. Thank you everybody who we have met for making this such an extraordinary experience. Your hospitality and friendships will always be remembered.

Best Regards,

The GSE Team through Anders

Final full day in Russia

So, the end is approaching. Today was our final full day in Russia. St Petersburg didn’t show its best face with heavy rains in the morning. However we very firmly determined to go to Peterhof, a huge castle and park complex created by Peter the Great. No bad weather would stop us.
Said and done, we boarded the speed boat which takes you there in approximately 30 minutes. It was definitely the right decision to go their despite the weather.


This place is absurd. The amount of fountains, springs, castles etc is absolutely astonishing. The weather was actually not that bad and thanks to the weather the place was not as crowded as usual. We spent some hours strolling around in the parks.
After lunch the sun actually broke through. When going back we discovered that the canals in the town where closed due to a military parade so we had to go back by bus and metro.


Once back in town we had some late lunch and then continued on with some free time for the team to go shopping. We realized that this was actually the only time we have had since the trip started to go to some shops. Crazy.

The 28th of May is the anniversary of St Petersburg so the evening was full with open air concerts and a very vivid street life. We sat down on the terrace of a restaurant, had some beers and debriefed ourselves of this amazing trip. The sun was on, the beer was cold, the streets crowded and life was all in all pretty good. A very worthy final day of a great month was coming to its end.

Best Regards,

Anders

Second day in St Petersburg.

We spent the morning being awed at the marvellous treasures of the Hermitage, such as the unforgettable paintings by da Vinci and Cranach. This is surely one of the greatest museums in the world.

After this we were invited to a private school in the outskirts of the city where we were shown the facilities and given a wholesome lunch. In the afternoon we went for a stroll through the old parts of the city, for instance passing by the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood that bears some resemblance to the St Basil's Cathedral at the Red Square in Moscow.

In the evening we had the opportunity to go to a jazz concert with David Golochekin.
Best Regards
Christian

First day in St Petersburg

After another pleasant night on a Russian train we arrived to St Petersburg where we immediately were taken off to sight-seeing. At first we went to the famous Peter & Paul Fortress and paid a visit to the tsars of past times, admired the spire and got familiar with the St Petersburg weather. A little later we were shown a monument where previous Swedish visitors (invaders) have left an impression in the shape of a snake under the hoof of Peter the Great´s horse.

The sight-seeing was concluded by us being impressed by the lavish St Isaac´s Cathedral and its fantastic mosaics.

After this introduction to St Petersburg we were ready to make a presentation of ourselves and Sweden at the Rotary Club "White Nights". The food and company were memorable.

Best Regards

Charlotte

Professional visit: Primary Care in Ivanova

The Russian health care organization is a little bit different from the Swedish and today I had the possibility to visit the comparison to the Swedish Primary Care Unit. The clinic covered a region of 54.000 inhabitants and had about 30 general doctors and about two doctors in each speciality (such as neurology, gynecology and cardiology). The clinic took care of all types of diagnosis and also minor traumas. The doctor commented the high rates of hip fractures, the problem with osteoporosis among women and preventive measures. Physiotherapy is always the doctors decision and is often used. Unfortunately I didn´t have the chance to experience the Rehabilitation Unit though, because of reconstruction work.



Best Regards

Charlotte

Textile Museum and university visits

You cannot stay in Ivanova, the city of textile, without visiting the Textile Museum. We received a detailed tour with good help from some talented English students. We learnt more about the textile production in the region and the block printing tradition that was indeed a difficult handicraft. The museum itself was a very special building. It used to belong to one of the textile magnates in Ivanova and had some interesting architecture.


We also met some students in one of the universities and we had some time for discussing different questions, for example our impressions of Russia, the Swedish school system and our traditions.


After a farewell dinner it was time to go the train station. Now we are heading for St Petersburg, our last stop before returning to Sweden.

Best Regards

Charlotte

Ivanovo 24th of May

On Tuesday we had some time to rest in the morning. Alexander picked us up about 11 AM and we went to have some breakfast. At 12 AM We went to the Ivanovo textile fare a very large building with close to a hundred small shops for different textiles garments etc.

After that we visited the sowing factory of Elena. Her company Carusell makes clothes beddings etc. for new-born children. She employs around 50 people and has one factory and three shops. The company also distributes to other clients around the region.

Then we went to Ruslan’s pasta factory Bostis. The factory was now taking a pause in production due to high material and low end product prices. This usually varied over the year and a production stop was not strange. Ruslan is currently looking for new machines in China to build a fully automated production line with low manual labour.

After a short rest we went to the Opera. Christan’s host-mother Vera is one of the best and most merited opera singers in Russia. She has won several international prices. This was her first performance in the Ivanovo region for a very long time (She has been involved in local politics etc.) so there was a very big crowd and the opera performance was a smashing success.

We then met up with some new friends we have met here in Ivanovo and had a great dinner followed by some bowling. Anders showed some real talent and won the series with 50 points to the second runner up.

//Oskar

Banquette at the Opera

After the splendid concert of the incomparable Vera Dobrolyubova Charlotte and I were invited to a banquette at the opera. We were given the seats of honor and had a great evening with the cultural elite in Ivanova. This was a unique insight in the cultural life that we never had experienced before with a perfect dinner and many interesting speeches. We are very grateful to Vera and our friend Aleksej for this opportunity.

Cultural greetings

Christian

The heart of Russia?

This morning my great host Alex and I had the pleasant company of Oskar. Unfortunately were we not allowed to keep him but had to hand him back to his host family before having a generous Siberian-style breakfast. All in all a very good start of the day.

Later in the morning were we attending an interesting round table meeting with many cultural and ethnic groups represented. To me this was very relevant to my profession and I will bring with me some good ideas how to approach these matters. During the meeting there was also some musical performances by young talents of which some were quite memorable.

Concluding this meeting we were sharing restaurant with celebrities attending the start of the annual movie festival. After this we were given the opportunity to visit the charming town of Suzdal, which is a medival town known for its many (many!) churches as well as its architecture and rural atmosphere. Our crazy weather gods didn't let us down and as always was our excursion framed by a perfectly blue sky. My host in Moscow called this town the heart of Russia, a fitting name for this Unesco heritage site. We are very grateful to our hosts who made this out-of-program trip possible.

In the evening were we invited to a very tasty dinner, a hot banja and good company. This Russian tradition would be very easy to get used to, meeting people, finding new friends and letting the mind and discussions run freely.

Yours truly,
Christian

Returning from Peshma

We started the day fairly early by attending a service in the Orthodox village church in Peshma. The service can take something between 3-4 hours, and all the participants are standing up all the time! We didn’t attend the full service but left after approximately an hour.

The Orthodox services are very different from a Protestant service. The most striking difference is in the interaction between the priest and the parish. In a service in Sweden there is a natural interaction; the priest talks directly to the parish, they sing together etc. In Russia it is much more like a staged ceremony where the priest does the chanting, praying etc. without really addressing the people directly and the people are more bystanders and passively watching.

After the service we took it easy in Peshma. Some of us went for a swim in Volga, we read some books and updated our diaries. In the afternoon we all gathered for Sashlik (barbeque) and then we went back to Ivanovo.


Once back in Ivanovo Oskar and I went to visit the Rotarian Darius and his wife Lena. We hanged in their garden there for some hours and had some beers, did some shooting with their air rifle and talked. All the sudden the hour was getting late so we continued directly to a pool hall where we played pool with Sasha and his friends. Also Christian, his host Alex and some of his friends joined us. We got the opportunity to try the Russian variant of pool with much bigger balls, bigger tables and smaller holes. The holes are actually only 3 mm wider than the balls. Try hitting that from across the other side of the big table.

As always we had a great time with Sasha, Alex and all their really relaxed and nice friends, and before we knew it the vodka was on the table and after that there is only one way forward; time for night clubbing. Although it was Sunday and Ivanovo is not a very big city we were able to find a nice little club with good atmosphere and we had an awesome night and was coming home way too late.

Best Regards,

Anders

Visiting Kineshma and Peshma

Today we left Ivanova together with a group of Rotarians to visit the villages Kineshma and Peshma, about 1,5 hours of car ride from Ivanova. The plan was to visit a center for rehabilitation of drug addicts, have a dinner in Peshma in one of the Rotarians houses and then spend the nigth in Peshma.

The rehab center was a fantastic experience. Seven years ago the owner (if now owner is the right word since it is a collective with only volunteers) Andrej moved from St Petersburg to a small piece of land with only a house ruin outside of Peshma. Andrej himself had a drug abuse background and he was determined to piece by piece build up a rehab center with only his faith and devotian. His idea of treatment is fairly simple; he applies ten basic rules for everyon in the center (such as ”Don’t steal”, ”Don’t lie”. ”Don’t drink” etc) and then he step by step teaches the ”clients” basic tasks such as growing their own food, taking car of the animals of the center, cooking, re-construction work etc. The main purpose is to re-build the clients self-esteem and make them feel useful, valued and wanted.

The center also applies a simple buddy-system, where rehabilitated clients take care of the new-comers and helps them through the first hard days of drug abscense.

The center receives no funding from the government but depends only on private donors, such as for example the Rotary Club of Ivanova. The center tries to be self-sufficient as much as possible, and the majority of the food is grown on the own land. The re-concstruction of the previous ruins have been made using second-hand construction material.

In this way, step-by-step, the center has been built from ruins into a kind of colletive farm where approximately 20 drug addicts get treatment. Some of the previous clients have remained at the center and are now working as volunteers, helping other drug addicts.

The center also has a number of sun-shine stories, such as for example the story of Andrej and his wife Anja. She came to the center as a severe drug addict with 13 years of abbuse. No treatment had been effective and her only purpose to come to the center was to have a place to die. Today she is fully rehabilitated, drug-free and although all the doctors told her that she couldn’t possibly get a child after whe she had done to her body she and Andrej today has a healty and beautiful son.

All the members of our group where impressed and humbled of what Andrej and the volunteers had achieved with so small resources. Personally I also really agree to the basic ideas of Andrej’s treatment. Get people connected with nature, submit them to physical work and teach them how to use their body and hands, give them a meaningful task and the sence of being able to contribute and make sure that they feel loved in a community. I think that beats any medical treatment in the world.

After the visit to the center we went to the house of one of the Rotarians in Peshma. We had a very nice dinner, a beautiful stroll along the Volga river and of course the mandatory Banja (sauna).

One or two shots of Vodka might also have been included in the concept.

Since we were in a small Russian village we were staying in the rather funky village houses, which has a standard of living a bit challenging for spoiled Swedes. Oscar didn’t have the best sleep of his life in the minimalistic couch/bed he was offered.

Best Regards,

Anders

Leaving Moscow

So for the last day in Moscow we had time in the morning to get some extra sleep. We were going to leave Moscow at 13.00 with the bus for Ivanovo. But a lot of time once again turned into a last minute race in the massive Moscow traffic. Without the excellent driving skills of Larissa and iPad map reading from Olga, Anders and I would have missed the bus.

The bus ride was kind of interesting outside temperature about 25 and bus temperature about 35. Also we had some trouble on the way, firstly a massive traffic out of Moscow since half of the city was heading for their dachas to spend the weekend in the wonderful weather. Later the bus broke down and we eventually had to abandon ship and board another bus.

But all this aside, when we were nearing Ivanovo we were amazed with the wonderful nature. It reminded us much of home, but bigger.

When arriving in Ivanovo only 2 hours after the planned time we were once aging met by wonderful people. Anders and I went with our host Alexander to his house where he had prepared a party for us with some of his friends. We had a great dinner and a lot of friendly discussions. Closer to midnight we went on an excursion in downtown Ivanovo.

Perfect end for a very long day.

//Oskar

An orthodox excursion

Enjoying another day of perfect weather we went for some sightseeing in the Golden Ring. We started with a church that had been raised over some caves in which there used to live hermits and was offered the opportunity to visit the caves ourselves. A remarkable experience, not at least as some hermits still lived in the caves in the late 19th century. The monk showing us the premises ended the tour by offering us to fill water bottles with holy water from a spring deep below the church.

In the afternoon we visited Sergiev Posad, one of the most important sites in Russian Orthodoxy. It is a most impressive fortress dating back to the 14th century with some cathedrals of great splendor. Once again we were lucky to have a monk guiding us speaking a fluent English and we were given a chance to participate in the ceremonies.

On the way back towards Moscow we got stuck in the traffic, a rather normal occurence in this city of traffic jams, and abandoned the car in favour of the Metro in order to get to a concert in time. The composer is a Rotarian and the concert itself was interesting.

Some of us continued the evening by strolling to the Red Square and enjoy the surroundings and the warm evening.

Best Regards,

Christian

Moscow by day

After an interesting Metro experience I met my group outside Kreml for a guided tour with our lovely Anna. Moscow was founded on this hill in the 14^th century, where Kreml now is located. We visited the beautiful churches and walked around the area enjoying the magnificent architecture saturated with history. No time for tea with Putin though...

We also visited the Saviour Church, a gigantic newly rebuilt cathedral in the heart of Moscow. The original church was built in celebration of the victory over Napoleon. Almost directly beneath the church there was a small Soviet style cantine where we enjoyed a simple but tasty lunch.

We enjoyed the art at the famous gallery третьяковская (yes, this is the tricky part, trying to understand the Russian signs). After this feast of earthly beauty we turned our minds towards Heaven attending an orthodox mass in a very old church and I believe we all felt relaxed after listening to the meditative hymns.

In the evening we had our presentation in the Moscow-East Rotary Club with many interesting questions about Sweden.

Best regards

Charlotte

Big City Time

Getting up this morning was a challenge thanks to the great farewell dinner yesterday. I think the complete group was a little bit out of shape. But through heroic efforts we managed to get our act together and boarded the plane from Rostov on Don to Moscow. We were of course looking forward to seeing the big capital, but as always there were mixed feelings when leaving a city. Our time in Rostov on Don had been awesome and the people were so friendly and caring. We will miss you all.

After a slight argument about our passports and visas with the airport police in Rostov on Don we arrived peacefully in Moscow. We were received by the rotarian Natalya who took us to here appartment for a nice dinner and some rest.

In the evening we went to see an amazing dance performance at the Tchakovski theatre. We went there by the Moscow Metro, which has some extraordinary stations, which could easlly be mistaken for ball-rooms or museums.

The dance performance contained two acts. The first one was based around tango and other ball-room dances. but the dancers must have been schooled also in clasicall balet, because their skill and precision was incredible.

The second act was based around Ukrainian folk-lore and an act about a really bad hang-over where the drunken Ukrainian man goes to hell with dancing devils and whiches. The dance contained acrobatics at a level which I have never seen in a dance performance before.

After the show Oskar and I were piced up by Zoja, our host mum. We are living in here apartment in a suburb in Moscow and the day was ended with a nice supper with Zoja, here daugther Larisa and her friend Olga. After that both Oskar and my-self slept like babies and got our well-deserved 7 hours of sleep before getting up the next morning, ready to attack Moscow.

Best Regards,

Anders