Beauty and Mayhem

I know its been far too long since the last post, so this is gonna be a long one - I've got a lot to say. We've been doing so much these past two weeks, that I barely had a spare moment to myself. I have been having an incredible time though. Time here is really flying by and I can't believe I only have a week left in Ufa as of today. Before I get into what we've been up to, I first have to say that I felt a bump up in my Russian these past few weeks!! I don't know if there has been an obvious improvement in my speech, but just this week I felt that I'm starting to think in Russian a lot more and when people talk to me I am recognizing many more words that I know and can use myself. So linguistically, its been a good few weeks, and that's just the beginning!


Like I said, I've been really busy, so I'll do a quick run down of what we've been up to. First off, classes still everyday 9am - 1pm, then some study time after 1pm. Besides that, I've celebrated the Fourth of July, gone to a few museums (dedicate to WWII, geology, and an art gallery), watched the horse races, swam in the largest lake in Bashkortistan and in a spring that was only 40 degress F, covered myself in mud next to a holy grotto, and taught people how to play Frisbee. I also rode an overnight train to and back from one of the most polluted cities in Russia, but that trip deserves its own post, so you'll hear about that one a bit later.

I guess I've got to go back a while - to the Fourth of July, actually! Our group put together a very American potluck style picnic in a park for the Fourth! Some of the tutors and host families and we taught them how to play frisbee, but mostly it was just our CLS group. Being in Russia, however, not a day passes without trying something new and a little bit crazy. On this particular occassion, that thing was кумыc (kymyz), mare's milk alcohol. I've been told that this drink is a specialty of the region, but I know people who have tried similar things in China. Since I also found out this week that the Bashkiri people were considered part of the Mongol Horde back when Genghis Kahn was around, my hunch is that the Mongols are the ones who spread kymyz around back in the day. Not that I necessarily thank them for it - I don't recommend the stuff at all. First off, when we opened the bottle, it exploded everywhere, a bit like champagne. It didn't seem to be that carbonated when I drank it, so I'm not really sure why it went everywhere. Moreover, it tasted awful - a bit like baking soda and sour milk, which might roughly be what it actually is, I'm not sure. Russians say that its really healthy, which could be true. Some of our tutors even managed to down a whole glass, though I don't think any of us Americans took more than one sip.

Kymyz - it exploded everywhere when we opened it

Speaking of Russian ideas of what is and isn't healthy, there's some wild folk-advice flying around here, strictly enforced by the legions of babushkas. I don't even think that a lot of the younger Russians buy these rules, but everyone follows them, because you cannot say "No" to a babushka. Here are some of my favorites:

• Girls shouldn't sit on the ground, especially not on stones or concrete benches, because then you'll have trouble having children because your lady parts will freeze up from the cold ground.
• Not eating meat will make your children stupid.
• Drinking anything cold (from the fridge or with ice cubes) can make you sick.
• Certain types of chewy candy are healthy and good for your joints, no matter how sugary they are.
• Drinking hot tea makes anything and everything better. (Ok, so this one is actually true)

For more background on the Russian babushkas and why you should always do as they say, check THIS out. There are some Russian babushkas who hang out in front of my apartment building and comment on whether or not my clothing choices are weather appropriate (apparently I'm really bad at knowing when or when not to wear shorts).

The museum visits were all program organized. The World War II museum was probably the most interesting, because Russians think of WWII much differently that we do.  For starters, what we consider to be WWII, as fought between the Allies and the Axis powers, Russians consider to be the "Great Patriotic War" (Великая Отечественная война), fought only between Russia and Germany. Considering how much Russia lost during the time, its not really surprising that they think about it this way - nearly a quarter of the population was killed during the war, which basically means someone from every family. As a result, the war is still a very salient part of the collective Russian memory and history today. I think every city has a large monument in honor of veterans of the war and the "Day of Victory" on May 9th is one of their biggest state holidays.

WWII museum in Ufa

Monument to Soldiers of WWII in Ufa

The geology museum and the art gallery were pretty uneventful - both were pretty small. To be honest, the geology museum was boring (sorry Dad, I know how cool you think rocks are, but I just don't get that). The art gallery had some pieces that I really liked, but it was only two rooms, unfortunately. 

Our other program excursions have been to the countryside around Ufa. These day long trips have really been the highlight of my time in Russia thus far. Although Ufa is a big city (the population is just over 1 million), it is smack in the middle of the Ural mountains, which are incredibly beautiful. Having been in the loud, dirty, bustling city for so long, the countryside absolutely took my breath away.

Our first countryside excursion was to the largest lake in Bashkortistan, Asylukul. It is about a 2 hour drive outside of Ufa, which was interesting in and of itself. Once you get out of the city, villages are few and far between and relatively small. There are cows, goats, and geese roaming free. One very common Russian practice is to keep a country house, called a 'dacha.' These are usually just cabins, most of them without indoor plumbing, but some people's dachas are even nicer than their apartments, if they can afford it. At the dachas many families tend gardens or bee hives (mmm... Bashkiri honey) and some families spend almost the whole summer in the country, especially if they have school age children it seems. There is a lot of cottage industry that goes on in the country too - mostly with food items - honey, smetana (a Russian dairy product that is a lot like sour cream, but sometimes can be like mayonnaise), kefir (a yogurt drink), milk, and some vegetables. Having 'banya,' a Russian bath, similar to a sauna, is very popular at the dacha also. Russians love their banya! I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I will soon, hopefully. Honestly, Russian country life seems really idyllic, especially in the summer. I suppose that winter is probably pretty tough -  I know that they get a lot of snow here (actually, from what I've heard, the weather in Ufa seems to be similar to the weather in Buffalo). 

Asylykul in relation to Ufa, Asylykul is the blue bubble in the bottom left and Ufa is where it says Уфа

Map of Russia for reference: Ufa is in the south of Russia, just north of eastern Kazakhstan

Anyways, back to Asylykul. After driving through gorgeous rolling fields (complete with some rather uncomfortable bathroom breaks - I wasn't kidding about the lack of indoor plumbing), we arrived at Asylykul. The lake isn't very large, you can see across it in all directions, and there are small cliffs along the beach at some points. We had a chance to go swimming and the water was wonderful. This was right after the week it was really hot here, so this trip came at the perfect time for me. Supposedly, the lake is a salty, but I didn't notice this when we were swimming. After a while, we hiked up to the top of a hill by the lake. We even got to try a portable Russian banya, which is basically an unventilated tent set on hot coals. Once you go in, they pour water over the coals, like a sauna, but much hotter (and I guess this variation is hotter than a typical banya). You stay in for about two minutes, then run and swim in the cool lake. The change in temperatures is supposed to be very healthy and help regulate your own body-temperature. The whole experience was refreshing, but the banya itself was way too hot for me. The view was awesome and I tried to take some good pictures, but of course I don't think I really did the place justice:

Rolling Bashkortistan countryside

The houses on the edge of the lake - we swam on the beach just behind the left-most house

This is one of my favorites

I was still soaked from swimming when we hiked up the hill and wouldn't you know that this was the day I learned the Russian word for 'sunburn' and 'tan' (they use the same one word for both).

The beach we swam on-  There were some rocks initially, but the bottom smoothed out after a few yards and the water got deep relatively quickly. The yellow tent in the back is the portable 'banya.'

We've made two other countryside excursions so far, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. The first one was to a spa-type location, based around a holy-grotto called "Krasnousolsk" (I think this probably translates to something like 'red salt place' from Old Slavic, but I could be wrong). There was a church and a holy grotto where you could light candles, as well as a small alter in the woods a bit, in honor of a saint who had a vision of the Virgin Mary at this spot at some point. We ate lunch at a nearby nunnery, where we were blessed by an older woman who spoke to us in surprisingly good English. The food was all homemade and I got to try a couple new things, including kesel, which is this berry flavored drink with a jelly-like consistency that someone told me I absolutely had to try in Russia. Sadly, I can't say I'm a huge fan of it (sorry Allyson).  The main attraction however, was a small river which had a number of mineral deposits (definitely sulfur at any rate - you couldn't get away from the smell). At one spot the water was deeper and very, very cold. The point here was to get in the water for a few minutes, then get out. Again, this satisfies the Russian obsession with regulating body temperature. At first I could barely stand how cold the water was, but after half an hour out in the sun on such a hot day it felt so, so good. Even better, was when we went to another part in the river to cover ourselves in mud. At first I was very skeptical about how this was going to benefit my health, but it was totally worth it. It was really fun and maybe even a little exfoliating. Sadly, I don't have any good pictures yet of us all muddy - I didn't want to touch my camera. Hopefully I can get some from someone soon. 

The spa

Gettin' muddy

The really cold part of the river

We drove by fields of sunflowers on the way to the spa! So pretty!

Our other country trip was to the "Blue Lake," which is more of a spring than a lake. It was exceptionally blue and exceptionally cold, supposedly 4 degrees Celsius, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The water felt that cold too and the main activity of the day was jumping into the water, swimming to the other side, laying out in the sun for half an hour, then doing it all over again. My body temperature is so regulated by now! There were a lot of people coming and going with their families all day and my favorite thing to watch was people dunking their toddlers into the water. The father would grab hold of the kid's wrists and dip him into the water for a few seconds, then the kid would scream and laugh. They usually got dunked a few times. We also made "blini", crepes, over a grill and hiked a bit. There were also a couple of guys racing horses back and forth across the fields. After how busy we've been, the day was relaxing and enjoyable - just what I needed. 

From the top of a hill overlooking the spring. Do you see the riders at the top of the bend in the river?

Again from the top of the hill. There were a lot of people coming and going to the spring all day - some of them had camped out there in tents.

The 'lake' wasn't even as long as a regular swimming pool, but it took a lot of willpower to swim over to the other side and not turn around to get out right away. It was just that cold!

Our Bashkiri horsemen. They were there all day too - racing back and forth, then taking a rest.

Well, that's almost it for this post. I have so much more to share, but I know its been a while and this is a long one, so I'll leave you all with this for now. I promise that I will get everything up here eventually, even if I have to play catch up after I get home. Although this is probably pretty obvious, I'm having an incredible time here and learning so much! I am by no means ready to leave in just two weeks.

On a more somber note, my grandma broke her leg this week and went in for surgery. I was traveling and didn't find out about it until after her surgery was over. Everything went fine and she is on track for a good recovery (nothing can slow this lady down for long). She told me that she should be home and back to normal by the time I get back to Buffalo by the end of August, but please keep her in your thoughts. Better yet, just go play Scrabble with her, so she's not bored in the recovery center - but expect to lose, she kicks butt at Scrabble. 

Me and my babushka

Shameless Plug

Ok, so I'm going to plug my friends' blogs here for a moment, because I realize that some of you may enjoy reading them and I don't think that they will mind (although I didn't ask, so I hope no one gets mad at me):

Summer in China: A friend from Brandeis who is doing some awesome work in Bejing this summer. He is one of the funniest people I have ever met and his blog reflects that - definitely worth reading, even if you don't know him. We are in a healthy competition with a China vs. Russia scavenger hunt. I think I'm winning.

loosdfromlimits: Another friend from Brandeis who is studying in Italy this summer. She is actually in my Russian class, but knows Latin too (cuz she's just that cool). Her writing style is beautiful.

Oh the Places You'll Go!: Someone else on the CLS Ufa trip with me! Read for more crazy Russia stories!


In Jane Goodall's Footsteps: A friend from Brandeis who went to Tanzania last fall. She's been back for a while, but I loved reading her blog and I like to go back and look at it sometimes. Her writing and pictures are incredible.

Russian Word of the Day: Not really a friend, but the professor of another student on the program. And I've learned a lot from it :)

So now that I have this kilogram of honey...

Honey for tea! Look how much honey I have!

... life could not be better. I absolutely love honey - on bread, in tea, basically anything you can do with honey. So I was thrilled to find out that Bashkortostan is super famous for their honey! And of course, the place to get the right honey as at the market, so on Saturday a few of us met up to go to the Orthodox Church and the Center Market. It turns out that at the market, you can either buy really small amounts of honey, or enormous amounts, so I got the enormous amount and I am enjoying it in my tea as I write. It is really delicious honey. By the way, Russians drink so much tea, mostly only black tea and sometimes with really strange fruity flavors. Even though it is almost 90 degrees here and like 75% humidity, my host mom must put on the kettle for tea at least 5 times a day. I love tea, but black tea not so much, and I sort of miss coffee, but I am adapting. I got some green tea (which the honey tastes delicious in) instead of the strawberry/blackberry stuff my host mom drinks, which I think is a bit gross, but so long as I am drinking tea, she doesn't care. Unfortunately, my host mom cannot share my passion for the honey. I came home and showed her the jar, explaining how much I liked the honey and that she was welcome to have as much as she wanted because I bought so much. Just as my luck goes, she says "I'm allergic." So I'll be coming home with a lot of honey in August.

I really like going to the market - you see all kinds of new stuff and its usually very inexpensive. Sometimes you can bargain to get lower prices too, but I'm not much for that - getting something like 15 rubles cheaper (like 50 cents) isn't usually worth the effort and the risk of making it even more obvious that I'm a total foreigner. Each neighborhood has its own market (rynok in Russian) and they're usually in big warehouse style buildings or set up as shops on an alley. There is a meat and fish room, which always stinks, but my favorite is the baked goods. You can get croissants with a little cheese on them or sweet poppy seed rolls for like 20 cents! My host mom buys her meat, produce (and by produce I mean her cabbage, cucumbers, and tomatoes), and eggs at the market. The other stuff you can get in grocery stores. By the way, in most grocery stores here everything is behind a counter and you have to tell an employee what you want. This is because of rationing in Soviet times and problems with stealing in the 90s. I kind of like it because I just get more practice speaking, but I have ended up with the wrong item before because of the language barrier. Because Ufa is such a big city, there are a lot of western style grocery stores though, which is easier if I'm buying a lot of stuff.

Besides going to the market, we also went to the ornate Orthodox Church. Whereas the mosques we visited have an understated beauty - soft colors, simple decoration - this church is probably more richly decorated than any cathedral I've been in. The building isn't very large, but it is stunning. The first thing you see is an enormous golden chandelier in front of a golden alter covered in icons. Walking in from the hot, loud street was a bit surreal. A priest chanting and the strong incense used in the church made it seems worlds away from the rest of the city. There are icons everywhere, you can even see them on the chandelier in the picture. I did notice that there aren't very many places to sit there, which made me wonder how the services are. I believe that instead of having one large mass once a week, prayers are led at certain times each day. There were a lot of people coming and going from the church while we were there, just saying their prayers and leaving. And headscarves are mandatory here as well.

The interior of the church- it seemed like icons covered everything.

A mural of the last czar - Nicholas - and his family (remember the Disney movie Anastasia? That family, the ones that were brutally murdered). They are saints in the Orthodox Church (maybe only the Russian Orthodox Church, I'm not sure) and I guess that there is a mural like this in many churches.

From the outside- I didn't take this, since I couldn't get a good shot because of all the traffic.

After our adventures to the church and the market, we walked around the city some more and ended up at "the old Muslim graveyard," to see a spectacular view over the city. The graveyard is a bit out of the way and in disrepair in some places. It was interesting to see the crescent moon symbol juxtaposed with the Soviet red star. Also, as per Russian custom, many of the headstones display pictures of the person buried there.

The old graveyard

View from the top of the graveyard overlooking the city - you can see the Belaya River in left edge.

In other news, it has been a long week. We went to the Bashkiri National Museum, which was interesting, but I had a very hard time following the guide - he mumbled. There was a lot of history, mostly on the role Bashkortostan has played in Russian history in general, from pre-imperial Russia until after World War II. Sort of a lot for me to process in just an hour. There was also an exhibit on cosmonauts! Russia's passion for Yuri Gargarin (the first person in space) is fabulous. Belka and Strelka, the first dogs to survive space flight, have a special place in my heart as well.

Belka and Strelka were pretty cute!

The way is open for people!! (since Belka and Strelka survived)

Bashkiri military dress.

On Friday, we went to a contemporary art gallery, where the curator showed us pieces focusing on the different cultures and history of Russia. I actually really enjoyed the talk and some of the pieces really stuck in my head. I also understood the curator very well - whether or not I enjoy our excursions seems contingent on whether or not I can understand the discussion.

Overall though, it was a tough week. The heat has been really getting to me - sitting in stuffy classrooms and traipsing around the city everyday in 85 degrees and humidity is not for me. Who'd have thought I'd be complaining about the heat in Russia? I've also been having a hard time sleeping, which makes it that much harder to process and absorb everything people say to me so that I can communicate and learn. I'm a bit frustrated with some parts of the academic program right now too, but as a group we've discussed that with the teachers and did a survey for the CLS program, so hopefully that will improve soon.

On the plus side, we're going to a lake next weekend, so I should be able to go swimming, which would be a huge relief in this weather! And, everybody is pumped to celebrate the 4th of July tomorrow!