We wake up in time for breakfast at 9.00 AM. The restaurant is in a small dining room, but very grand, with circular leather sofas around the tables. The main dining room next door is like a state banqueting hall, with huge chandeliers. To our delight the restaurant also has a bank of phones by the door that are exactly the ‘hotline’ style that we’ve been looking for. Unfortunately the hotel refuses to sell it to us on the grounds that they need it to talk to the kitchen.
Today we’re heading for a forest camp at Oxotino, via an open air museum of Russian wooden architecture.
The museum is set in a birch forest, where wooden houses from all over Russia have been transplanted and rebuilt. Each one is increasingly grand, and looked after by its own curator, who seem to be universally women over 60. At the last house, we accidentally attempted to go in through the exit, and had our way barred by a woman and a torrent of Russian. In full retreat, we backed out of the building, moved four feet to the left, and walked through the entrance to see the same woman smiling at us in welcome. As we left we asked if we could take her picture, which made her very happy.
I also took a picture of two Russian girls who seemed very uninterested in the wooden houses but utterly engrossed by the handheld Tetris games they were holding. We walked through the beautiful silver birch forest and saw what looked like a wedding party, then returned to the bus to visit the nearby monastery.
The monastery was actually virtually next door. There were lots of exhibits, and we were asked for our ticket in every room. The icons were impressive in age and quality, if a bit overwhelming in quantity.
Back on the road we head for the forest camp where we are to spend the night. We stop for lunch at McDonald’s, which, according to Sasha is the only place available due to a cold water shortage in the area. This seems slightly ridiculous because it’s pouring with rain.
We arrive at the forest camp at about 5.00 PM. Sasha and Dimitri produce a deck of cards, hoping to redeem their national pride after their loss in the pool tournament. We play poker for matches until about 7.00 PM when we have dinner. Rob attempts to make a cup of tea – our room has two water urns, so he replaced the big one with the smaller one, filled it and plugged it in. No effect. Determined, he filled the big urn from the small one, topped it up and plugged it in. Rather worryingly this caused the lights in the room to dim. Having fashioned a mug from a Coca-Cola bottle, and found a teabag, the tea was eventually made.
We played more poker after dinner, and went out to the forest to collect firewood, then had a ‘Banya’, or Russian sauna. This is rather like a normal sauna, except that it’s hotter, and you beat your fellow sauna users with birch branches that have been soaked in boiling water. This is supposed to be therapeutic. Sasha and Dimitri fiddle with the boiler, apologising that the banya is not hot enough, while Rob and I sit still and try to avoid passing out in the face of the furnace-like heat. Then came the birch beating, administered with much gusto by Sasha, and finally the ritual dowsing in icy water as we left the sauna. I have to admit I was feeling pretty refreshed, but Rob was looking none too good for the experience.
More poker playing ensued, with local girl Veronica joining in. She spoke no English, which only served to make her bluffs that much more difficult to read. Dimitri soon disappeared to build a barbecue for dinner. Sasha then disappeared briefly, leaving Veronica looking a bit like a fish out of water. We went through all the English words she might know, and had discovered only “queen” by the time Sasha returned, although Sasha quickly determined that her knowledge of queen was musical rather than royal. By the time the barbecue was ready, Veronica had won all of our chips.
The barbecue was excellent, although it was a typical bloke barbecue, in that it consisted solely of barbecued meat. We headed for bed at about 2.00 AM.