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