One of the nice things about the schedule at AAS is that there is a one-week holiday the first week of November which coincides with the Russian school calendar here in Москва. For anyone so inclined travel for the week is an easy flight to most Euorpean and many Asian cities. That said, Nancy and I spent the last week in Prague in the Czech Republic. We stayed in a very nice hotel in the “Old Town” section of the city. Prague is a very walk able city and so we spent the week taking organized and our own tours. By the end of each day the cobble-stoned walks and roads do take told on your feet but worth the price for the chance to stay in one of Europe’s ancient and elegant cities. You no doubt will understand that I took 100’s of images and as I work through them I’ll post them on my site for those who are interested.
Our Prague trips accounts for the week-long silence from blog posts. We arrived back in Москва yesterday evening and so I’m back in business today (Sunday).
A couple of weeks ago a group of about 20 teachers from AAS could a trip to a dacha about 70 km north of Москва to take Russian cooking lessons. The owner (Galena – spelling may not be correct) owns a beautifully maintained and restored dacha which was in her family for generations. The dacha originally functioned as a weaving factory where hand-made fabrics are woven on a traditional loom. One loom is still functioning and is run by an old woman who has been a weaver since she was a child. The loom is completely hand-made and complex in its design and function. We were told it is probably the only one of its kind, perhaps in the world.
I addition to watching our lady weaving on the loom we took Russian cooking lessons in the dining and kitchen areas of the dacha situated next to a traditional wood-fired oven where the pastries we helped made were baked.
We also helped prepare some of the ingredients to make a large pot of borscht (борщ.) Personally, I had thought борщ was a red thickened soup made primarily from beets. We learned that while beets can be used борщ is made from any available vegetables in the yard or kitchen. It is prepared as a thickened vegetable stew and was served at the end of our visit in the dining area where we sat at beautifully set tables next to the warm brick oven.
I took several hundred photos while we were at the dacha and put together 3 slideshows from some of the images. If you’re interested, the slideshows can be downloaded from my Web site (URL below – click on the “Russian” link.) There are two formats: “.exe” and “.pdf”. If you use a Mac the .pdf version should work for you. Rather than try and activate the shows from my site it’s best to download them from my site to a convenient folder on your machine and activate them from there.
До следующего раза ...
Энди
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