Живая Вода- Water of Life Festival...FAIL

The other day, after my weekly yoga class, the yoga teacher was kind enough to point out a poster advertising an ethnic Russian folk festival called, Живая Вода (pronounced zivaya voda).  I was naturally curious about it and ran home to Google it.  They had not only one, but two web pages, one in remarkably good English and the other, of course in Russian.  For the record, here's the English website:
http://runknown.com/festival-of-ethnic-cultures-water-of-life-2013 which looks amazing.  I feel like I've fallen into rut over the past several months of doing nothing more than going to work, going home and on rare occasions, seeing my friends.  This looked like the shot in arm I needed to reconnect with my love of foreign cultures and travel in general.

I passed this joyous news onto my English girlfriend and a few other people who may have also been interested, most weren't but a few were.  My friend, Gabi, had told me about this breath taking festival that she had gone to in Omsk a few weeks prior and to honest, I was (and am) a little jealous.  She described seeing about 3000 people dancing around a fire which took 45 minutes to start since they only using dry sticks and stones to start the bonfire.  I don't care who you are, if you can start a fire without using matches or gasoline then you get alpha male points.  Anyway, with this mental picture already established, the bar was set quite high for the festival I saw advertised.

After a week of planning, Sunday morning came and three bus tickets had been purchased to go to the small village of Kolyvan, which is about 40km outside of the Novosibirsk.  Gabi was running late which was no surprise to me since that girl would be late to her own funeral, so it was just the two of us.  The bus ride itself was uneventful, and we arrive in Kolyvan in about an hour.  There were a few people also going to this festival and once we arrived, no one knew where to go.  I was thinking that since the festival was so big and old, surely there would be signs...ha, silly me, for a moment I forgot where I was.  No one actually puts up useful signs, only one small one which you can only see if you're on the street of the festival.  After asking about five different people we pointed in the proper direction.  At some point we made friends with a babushka who was also going the festival.  I found her to her to be delightful.  Since we had to walk about kilometer, she decided to tell us about a winter folklore festival which she had been to last year.

Finally, the moment of truth, we found the tiny sign and saw some tents, and we had arrived! I sent an excited text to Gabi and then I let my eyes take in the sights around me...

Yes, the town itself is quite picturesque and cozy, but as for the festival, well, you can see for yourself.  At first glance I thought was I was just being too harsh, but upon further inspection...well, I saw this.

What about this is exactly 'ethnic Russian'?  At no point did someone pull out a balalaika or Altai flute or even a cool violin thing that I don't even know the word for.  Instead, we were subjected to off-key Celtic music, which I'm sure all of Ireland would be offended by, less than smooth and rehearsed Indian music and some guy trying pull off throat singing, but it sounded like a bear and a walrus and attempted to mate.  In a word or two, I was disappointed and completely disillusioned. 

Once I got over my shock and tried to shoo away the gloom that accompanies shock and disillusionment, I tried to find the positive.  The positive was this- Russian hippies!  The festival was calm and relaxed, as you can see, lots of people were running around half naked, not that I blame them since it was remarkably hot that day.  In true hippie style, there were drum circles everywhere, and people doing questionable yoga, people selling trinkets to protect auras and henna tattoos.  In retrospect, I should have gotten a henna tattoo since I've never had one before.  No one was drinking and almost no one smoked, so it was clean and calm. 

After an hour, my other friend Maria, showed up.  She was little more prepared that I was and came with blankets to sit on, my only preparation was to bring Mohitos and water.  After spending another hour desperately trying to enjoy the bad music and overall laziness of the 'festival' Maria saved me by offering to show me how to make a flower garland.  Now I can safely say that I've picked wild flowers and made an interesting piece of head gear.

My main complaint is this: you can't say that you're going to host an ethnic festival and not have ethnic people there.  Hippies don't count as ethnic and bad Indian music and even cheaper jewelry doesn't count either, it's just insulting.  

Babushka vs Spy

It’s a nice 90 degree day and despite the stale heat, it’s a beautiful day.  As I was standing on the crowded bus, trying my best to keep myself calm and collected, I saw this babushka make a mad dash onto the bus with, you guessed it, two enormous bags.  It didn’t matter that there were other people boarding at the same time, and it mattered even less to her that the bus continued to idle for another two minutes which meant that the rushing was completely unnecessary.  This got me thinking about babushkii in general.  Yes, I know every traveler from Moscow to Kurdistan has a story about a babushka, and most of these stories are hilarious as they are special.  There is the story of the babushka freaking out because a girl was sitting on a bench in the winter and she thought that her eggs would freeze.  There’s the story of an old woman giving an uncalled for lecture to a guy because he had dirty shoes.  There’s the ever classic story of not one babushka, but several shouting at some students because they were speaking any language other than Russian.   And my personal favorite, being spoken to firmly because I had the misfortune of snagging my nylons; it was after all my goal to waste five dollars by ripping my nylons on purpose. 

Now you may be asking yourself: why do they care so much?  Or for that matter, do they really care or do they just need something to talk about?  The Soviet Union is but a dim a memory for many of the young people these days, so perhaps the aging generation is desperately trying to make their voices heard to validate the years of conformity.  Just like rebellious teens that make it a point to dress wildly and shout obscenities; the senior generation has to pass judgment on those they simply don’t understand.  Like countless people it must be a shock to wake up one day and realize that the world which you grew up in is long gone.  These women were raised in an era where people had a handful of patterns and materials to choose from for clothes, impressively long lines for eggs and milk and were really allowed to form personal opinions; imagine the astonishment to see their grandchildren, especially girls, running around in what can only be described as porn style Soviet school uniforms where the skirts barely conceal butt cheeks.  We now live in a world where we have access to vast quantities of information, no one is afraid to criticize the government (correction, you’re allowed to grumble and you better not be someone in office) and traveling is open to all those who which to deal with the paperwork.  In other words, it’s a brave new world.  In this world no one cares a girl is sitting on something cold, a young man under age 30 will be annoyed about being dirty, but won’t panic and no one will lecture you for speaking a different language.  Will they stare at you?  Absolutely.  Will they tell you to shut up?  No.  Will they think you’re a spy?  Well, something never change with time; but once people accept that you are a spy you may continue with business as usual.       

Let me backtrack a bit about The Babushka; first thing’s first, what exactly is a babushka?  It’s a fun fact that all foreigners who come to the post-Soviet world use this word instead of the English word ‘grandmother’.  Why?  Perhaps it’s because elderly ladies from America, England, Australia etc are just, for lack of a better word, different than they are in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and so on.  The typical body type of a babushka is square with massively wrestler type arms.   She will have either a classic color of hair such as brown or blonde, but just to walk on the wild side; it’s not unheard of to see babushki with purple or magenta colored hair.  Keeping this imagine in mind…imagine her with gold teeth and a shawl wrapped around her.  It sounds like I’m describing a stereotype.  I’m not doing much to promote the open-mindedness which I pride myself on, but bear with me.  The purple haired babushka which wears just about every color combination and pattern known to man is my favorite.  She is the one who will happily shout at a young person and demand that they give her their seat on the bus, but at the same time, she will happily give up her seat a pregnant woman.  She will be upset that you don’t speak Russian, but if you’re buying tomatoes or milk from her she will undercharge you by ten rubles (about fifty cents).  If you are invited for a meal with her, she will spend all day cooking for you and be offended if you get full and it’s just possible to eat another piece of cake.  Paradoxical?  Undeniably.  And with these clearly generous yet confusing people, they can be summed up in one word:  Russia.  

Nothing annoys me more than being pushed on an already overcrowded bus by an old woman who hasn’t used a toothbrush in about a week only to told by the same woman that I should somehow move some more because she has to make room for her bag.  Speaking of bags, even young people will ask, what’s in a babushka’s bag?  Potatoes?  Slippers?  Body parts to be sold on the black market?  Perhaps precious metals to be melted down for some nefarious purpose, but whatever may be in those ever present suitcase style bags, they are clearly heavy as they are ugly.  If you’re going to be running all around the city with such huge bags and pushing people with them, at least have the decency to push people with a fake Louis or knock-off Gucci bag.  Since this happens on a weekly basis it more or less makes me crazy.  After all, once again, who do these women think they are?  Yes, they do have their charm but the charm is like a light switch: they’ll be fine one moment and go off at the bus conductor for driving one meter further than normal.     

My friend and I were discussing a curious situation about crossing the street since the lights didn’t seem to be working and as usual the drivers had no idea what to.  She just scanned the streets for a babushka and decided to cross when she did.  I naively asked her why and she just shrugged her shoulders and said, “when in doubt, just do what the babushka does”.  This made me laugh and I told her that I wanted to make t-shirts with this funny yet very accurate piece of advice.     

You may also be asking yourself, ‘yes, the streets are filled with bi-polar babushki, but where are the grandfathers?' Notice the language shift?  We don’t use the Russian word, ‘dedushka’ we simply say old man or old guy.  The easy explanation is that we, as in travelers, don’t have the same experiences with them like we do with women.  Yet the sad truth is that most of men just die younger; and perhaps this statically depressing fact is what also drives the women to act as they do.  Whatever the case may be, Russia wouldn’t be Russia without babushki.  

       

The Great Dacha Adventure

Last week, on a Wednesday Sasha invited me to go to his parent's Dacha.  Just to recap, dacha is like a summer house, but for the over active imagination of the English and Americans it's not like a real house; though they can be, but for the most part they are small structures with very little frills and no working bathrooms.  The problem with the dacha is that you never know what you're going to get.  I've been in some dachas that are like small mansions and others that resemble something from hillbilly's wet dream.  When Sasha made the invitation, it went something like this:

Him: Let’s go to dacha this weekend.  But I have to tell you, it’s not so great.  It’s not VIP or anything.

Me: Gee, that does sound like fun.

Him: Nah, it’s not so bad.

In very Russian style he managed to make an outing outside of the city sound like going to jail, and then make it sound like I made it sound bad.  This is truly a Russian trait.   One must always remember to take things with a grain of salt.  I was curious what this bad but not so bad place looked like, so I agreed.  On the day we were supposed to leave, which was Saturday afternoon, I had to work.  Being me, I planned ahead and packed what I needed and took the backpack with me so that I could meet him at the train station.  After work, and several text messages we agreed to meet on the street and try to catch the 2:57 train.  At 1:40 I got a message telling me that he was just now going to the store.  It was now very clear to me that we weren’t going to be making the train because time management is not anyone’s forte here.  Granted, I am a bit of time Nazi, but that only happened because of people who refuse to plan their day and time accordingly.  But I’m ranting about time when it’s not necessary. 

After getting caught in the now famous Siberian rain storms, I was soaking wet and did have to concede and go home to dry off.  Perhaps the universe was trying to keep me off the three o’clock train, who knows.  But we finally made it on the five o’clock train, which departed late.  If I’ve learned anything from traveling it’s that patience is my best friend and worst enemy. 

After arriving in the middle of nowhere I felt the twinge of something I haven’t felt in ages, the thrill of being somewhere new.  It’s easy to fall into the jaded mentality of ‘been there, done that’ it happens to all of us who travel around so much, but this excitement, this feeling of being alive…it’s what helps me get out of bed most mornings.  The realization that you are in fact doing something new and seeing something that perhaps none of your childhood friends of family will never see, this is what makes it all worthwhile. 

Once I came down from my high of being alive my eyes took in the landscape.  A famous philosopher once said, ‘where ever you are, there you are’ and I was there.  Endless amounts of trees, birch and cottonwood to be exact, lush fields of green weeds and a perfectly blue sky with picturesque clouds.  This is where the perfect village should be.  And lo and behold, it was.  There was a quaint store that greeted us with spray painted promises of beer and ice-cream, and after the 2 kilometer walk, I was so happy about the idea of ice-cream, but alas all they had was beer.  Three refrigerators of beer.  No water or juice or ice-cream, just beer.  It’s as funny as it is depressing.  To be fair, they did also have food, just nothing that I wanted, which was ice-cream.  Ice-cream aside, we did get beer.  Dacha without beer is like dancing without music.  One of the many things I enjoy about Russia is that in the summer all bets are off when it comes to being conservative.  People are not afraid to run around in their underwear; men, women and children, it’s all acceptable and even encouraged.  There’s nothing I love more than buying things from an overweight babushka wearing a head scarf and her way too thin bra.  Try getting that image out of your head.  Or the guy who just doesn’t eat enough carbs and you can see every bone is body.  Also not sexy. Put on a shirt people.  Sheez.  I was feeling very over dressed in my short skirt and tank top compared to everyone in the little shop and was just anxious to rest and see the dacha, plus, it was getting ready to rain again.

  

Once we reached the house, I am happy to report that it was cute; adorable actually.  It was two levels, electricity, and we were welcomed by blooming peonies. Any time a Russian says something is bad, you just can’t believe them. We promptly set up some music and Sasha began to make the mandatory shashlik.  A neighbor came over to introduce himself, which I found quite surprising and enjoyable until he decided to check me out in his underwear.  The only time it's acceptable to check people out in underwear is 1) if they are hot strippers and they have hot stripper bodies 2) if they are wearing cool or sexy underwear.  If you are wearing less than fashionable underwear and not a hot and sexy stripper then just keep your eyes to yourself.  Anyway this neighbor returned an hour later because we were dancing and I was happily singing along and he accused Sasha of not being Russian.  I'm not sure why it mattered, but it annoyed me.  Only here do people argue about your heritage.  On any given day people think that I'm from Turkey or Georgia or in some extreme cases, China.  No one ever believes that I'm American; someone should really tell me what an American is supposed to look like.  Aside from that, he seemed pleasant.

After overeating shashlik and tomatoes and admitting defeat against the mosquitoes we decided to hang out inside.  I found it to be quite cozy and for the first time in months I was able to sleep on a real bed and it was soft.  Nothing like the wooden thing I sleep on in the city, so I think I slipped into a short coma.  In the morning I was more than happy to help pull weeds and water since I do miss having a garden, but it suddenly hit me that people do this every weekend.  I can't imagine traveling and walking so far to spend 30 hours doing manual garden work. I wouldn't even want to visit this place that often, which is perhaps why the dacha is losing some interest among young people.  Isn't it just easier to have a house with a garden?

The train was filled with people returning to the city, but they looked more tired that we were, possibly because they had been working under the hot sun all weekend.  Perhaps it was also because they had gone the whole weekend nearly naked and it annoyed them.  But now that I'm really thinking about it, perhaps I'm just being too judgmental, after all, what's wrong with being half naked?  Maybe these people are onto something.  Food for thought.