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Painting the red town

It was late December, and I was staying with Kate at her parents’ place in a Russian town called Pudozh.

For (Western) Christmas, her parents had given me a box of chocolates, which itself was very kind of them to do. But that wasn’t all: They gave me a wooden figurine of a bird made by local artisans. The bird’s wings were outstretched as if in flight, and it had a little hole in its back so you could hang it from the ceiling. It was called the Bird of Happiness.

Having spent a few whole days inside, Kate and I went out, and I got to see the town. First, her dad took us to the cultural house and the music school, which shared a building not far from where we were. Kate’s father played the accordion and the balalaika and was well known in town because of his association with the cultural house.

A woman gave us a tour of the facility. In what turned out to be the beginning of a trend, the tour was given entirely in Russian, so Kate translated some of what was said. It was actually a fairly small place, and what I remember the most was seeing the classrooms filled with students’ artwork: paintings, figurines, and the like. Kate commented on how it had changed since she had taken lessons there.

Soon, the tour was over, and we were outside. And it was at night. In the interior of Russia. In December.

I’m playing to your preconceived notions, of course. People are uniformly incredulous when they find out I went to Russia for winter break, and I try to tell them that it wasn’t that bad, but no one will have any of it. Saint Petersburg was fine: I was outside for hours at a time. Pudozh, I’ll admit, was colder. At night, maybe unbearably so. But it was a town, so there were buildings and things where you could go inside and be perfectly warm. Sometimes, at Kate’s parents’, it even got too hot inside, and we had to open the windows. The owners of the building would just turn the radiators on or whatever and leave them on all winter, so that’s what you’d do if it got too hot.

Anyway, we were outside. Nearby was a grocery store, so we went inside to buy a few things. We passed by the vodka section, the sheer breadth of which would make many of my cohorts’ eyes glaze over with excitement. Elsewhere was an equally large selection of tea. Russians drink lots of tea, and I don’t know why more people aren’t aware of that. Maybe it’s because a lot of peoples around the world drink tea, and vodka is more of Russia’s own thing. Besides, it’s easier to make fun of the British for that because they can understand our taunts.

I got a couple of cans of Coke at the store. You can take Jordon out of America, but you can’t take America out of Jordon. Actually, it’s funny. I never have as huge of a craving for a hamburger as I do when I’m in a foreign country bereft of ham-, cheese- and all other burgers. But really, I looked at the can and was able to read that one of the first ingredients was sugar, so naturally, I wanted to check it out.

Then we were back outside. An electronic sign in a store window said it was -21 ºC, or -6 ºF. A large tree was decorated with colored lights for New Year’s Day, which was only a few days away. My camera couldn’t handle the cold, and I couldn’t blame it.

For dinner we went to a cafe that was located in the local hotel, so I guess it was mostly for whatever tourists might be there. The cafe was called White Nights, referring to the northern summer days that last so long that it actually stops getting dark for a while. I had some coffee to warm myself up. Kate and I tried each other’s food. On a wall near our table was a colorful photograph of some tropical island beach, which must have been put up by someone with a sense of humor.

The next day, we took a taxi to the city museum on Karl Marx Street. We had a tour guide take us through the museum. Again, I only was only able to receive the gist of what was being said, but I could see the artifacts. It started with the ancient history of the Pudozh area and progressed to tsarist days with traditional farm equipment and clothing. There were a couple of rooms dedicated to World War II, with military jackets, something that looked like an air raid siren, and newspaper headlines from pivotal days during the war.

In the museum’s guestbook, I wrote a brief message in English, which nobody could probably read, but I thought it would be a nice gesture. In my haste the only actual Russian I was able to write was “США” so they would know where I was from.

After the museum, Kate’s dad came to drive us and a tour guide around the city. At one of the first stops, we got out, and I saw a pack of Soyuz-Apollo brand cigarettes on the ground. I had never heard of the brand, and I was amused by the name. It probably caught my eye because “Apollo” was actually written in the Latin alphabet while everything else was Cyrillic. It must be odd seeing two different alphabets everywhere, especially on the Internet, where most URLs are (probably) still in an alphabet that’s foreign to many people. In some advertisement somewhere I saw a URL ending in “.ру”, which I quickly realized was a Russian translation of “.ru”, as in “Русский” (Russian).

We walked to the war memorial, which had the names of the local dead written out, and even a few graves. Then we went to one of the old Orthodox churches, which was being renovated for future use. At first it seemed totally abandoned inside, but then I noticed that two men were up on some scaffolding, doing some work near the ceiling. Kate, or maybe the tour guide, told them that I was an American, so one of the guys told me to say hi to Obama for him. Outside the church was a tiny cemetery covered with a thick layer of snow.

The following day was December 30. Kate had to make a routine visit to the local hospital. The building was crowded and looked like it was falling apart. It wasn’t until we were seated outside the doctor’s office that I realized that this was probably the absolute worst place I could possibly be as a warm-blooded foreign tourist who hadn’t gotten any recommended vaccinations. I became worried. I reduced my breathing to shallow breaths as if that would help at all. There really was nothing I could do. Needless to say, I ended up fine, but I wouldn’t put myself in that situation again.

Next we went to Kate’s school. Even though I was in another country where I didn’t speak the language, the heady feeling of wandering around a school during a school day transcends international boundaries.

Kate wanted to meet her English teacher, so we made our way to the English classroom. It was decorated with New Year decorations and informational posters about the UK and the English alphabet. Kate had told me that I’d be speaking to the class, but there were no students there. It was the last day of school, and they had been let out early. So just the teacher was there. It was good to talk to another English speaker.

I had brought a few photos of my American life, which I showed her. I mentioned how my family had recently moved, and she asked if it was common for American families to move. Other than that, she didn’t seem particularly interested in my pictures or me, but was fascinated by the hundreds of photos from Kates’ trips to the US. We must have been there for a couple of hours. It made sense, though. They already knew each other well and could chat in their own native tongue.

Later, we had dinner at another restaurant that was part of a hotel. In case you’re wondering, we got there (and to a lot of the other places) by taxi. It was pretty cool that we could get around so easily and cheaply; it’s not a service I would expect a small town to have, but there you go.

The next day was December 31, a big day in Russia.

It’s unfortunately been a long time since all of this happened, so this post is probably full of errors that Kate can point out. I’ll be glad to fix them as soon as I can.