Botanical Garden

I enjoy walking around Minsk, but I’ve spent most of my time walking around the same few places. A few days ago, I decided to try something new, to get to the Botanical Garden without taking any major streets. I almost succeeded in avoiding big streets, though I had to walk for a few minutes along Platonava Street, where I stopped to visit a couple of very interesting stores: a shop selling a wide selection of traditional Belarusian fabrics and a place specializing in work clothes. I didn’t need anything from either place, but I liked the fabric store a lot. In addition to raw fabrics, they sell bed linens and table linens, so I’m sure I’ll be back.

My busy street led right up to a side door at the Botanical Garden, an entrance I’d never discovered before this. I bought myself a ticket and the lady told me I should without fail go to visit the public greenhouse. As I headed straight over, snow began falling lightly. The light powdery coating decorated what I saw and made me especially glad to be there.

I arrived at the conservatory just as a group of school kids began to leave, and by the time I’d hung up my coat and taken a few steps in, I had the place almost to myself. Noticing bird cages lining the main walkway, I decided to start by walking past the birds, parrots of various kinds. I wondered if any of them talked. Yes, in fact, they do. The chattiest of the birds greeted me as I walked up. “Privet,” he said. (“Hello.”) I answered, and we greeted each other several times before I walked away. A boy and his grandmother walked up to the cage, and the same bird rapped on the cage with is beak and asked, “Kto tam?” (“Who’s there?”) The boy rapped back, and the bird asked again, “Who’s there?” The next bird answered, something about a crocodile. Alla said they were almost quoting a cartoon dialog involving a character called Crocodile Gena.

Of course the birds served simply as extra decorations in a building dedicated to flowers and plants. Touring the building, I stopped especially to admire the plants in flower and the cactus. Near the cactus garden, I noticed a door I’d ignored on my previous visits. It turns out there’s a café here, with reasonable prices and nice-looking food, though I didn’t stay to eat because I wanted to have lunch at home. I figured I could walk down the central pathway and out the main gate, right near a subway station.

Imagine my disappointment at the main gate then, when I discovered it locked and unattended. Apparently they use only the side entrance during the winter, and I had to walk all the way back and then retrace my steps outside the long wall so I could get to the subway. The two gates are far apart, and I got pretty hungry by the time I reached home, but enjoyed a great walk and a beautiful opportunity to see the Botanical Garden in winter.

Poetry show

Zarina got invited to participate in a poetry event at the factory where she works. Nearly everybody at the factory is visually disabled in some way, and it’s a group of people I’m gradually getting to know as a volunteer guide. Because they’re dependent on each other from time to time, they’ve got a special group dynamic that I enjoy seeing and experiencing. I asked if she could get me an invitation to the performance.

Zarina finally confirmed my invitation just before the event. I’d already made other plans for the day, and felt a little bit conflicted about taking the afternoon off, but knew the moment that I walked into the room that I’d made the right choice. In addition to the people I already knew, a variety of new people came in, helping each other with their coats and finding chairs for everybody. I looked around and discovered that everybody had gotten dressed up, and wished that I’d dialed up my own outfit one more step. This show looked to be a big deal.

I knew that I’d gotten my invitation as a special privilege, so when more people arrived I gave up my seat for them and offered to stand at the back of the room. One of the hostesses could see me, and she’d have none of that. She went out with a couple of other people and brought in some more chairs and made me take a seat in the newly-added front row. I felt extra special now.

The show couldn’t have been better. Nearly everybody had memorized their poems, some of which were quite long, during the course of a month. And then they presented them with appropriate amounts of humor, passion and pathos: poems translated from Shakespeare, as well as classic Russian poets, and modern Soviet poets. I understood them well enough to enjoy them, though I found one or two of the poems a little difficult. I also had a really good time watching the teacher and master of ceremonies read a few extra poems from braille. She held her sheaf of papers sideways and strummed the text like a guitar, reading by hand as quickly as she could talk. I’ve never seen anybody read braille before, and I had no idea it could be so efficient.

I’m inspired to try to learn one of the poems myself. I’ve downloaded it and I read it aloud one time to Alla. I had a hard time with the text and need to look up a few of the words, but I’ll practice bit by bit. I wish I’d made a recording from the show, because the reader did an excellent job with this poem’s humor, pacing and inflection. I’d like to learn to approximate that.

Volunteer activities

Our friend Elena teaches English at School Number 31 and I’ve gotten to know quite a few of her students over the years. She invited me over to her classroom yesterday to talk about volunteer work. One of her students has been especially busy with a cancer-treatment facility, and she inspired her peers to help raise money in a joint project for the school and the treatment center. Knowing that I have a volunteer project of my own, she thought we’d enjoy having a chat in English.

I’m really impressed by the level these students have reached in English language. Everybody is able to speak reasonably freely and carry on conversations comfortably. We talked about cooking, because I came to visit while they were baking pastries for their fundraising project. They already knew plenty, but I was able to teach them a few new words and phrases, including “cookie sheet,” “batch” and “golden brown.” Each batch of pastries came out beautifully, but Elena wouldn’t let anybody eat one because they would be for sale today. Fortunately, however, she made an exception for me. It was delicious.

I’m really glad I came back for the bake sale and craft market. As I arrived, music spilled from an open window onto the playground beside the school. Inside, the place throbbed with activity. In the lobby, people did face painting, applied make-up, taught crafts and generally looked very happy. I rushed through the lobby, however, to see what the various classrooms had set up on the tables in a main hallway. I plunged into a sea of people and squeezed past table after table of delicious pastries, pancakes, cookies and handicrafts. I bought eight of the cookies my hosts made yesterday and far too many other goodies. Having eaten many of them on the spot, I left the hallway in a buzzy delirium of sugar and lurched into the auditorium to watch part of a student program.

When the students at School Number 31 do something, they do it with enthusiasm. Just as the whole school devoted itself to the bake sale, I think every class must have been represented in the program, though I didn’t stay to be sure. I am sure, however, that the students prepared themselves well. I had a ball spending part of the morning with them. Thanks!

To see this month's entire photo album, click here.

Fashion in Minsk

Our ever-stylish friend Tamara told us where she buys her clothes. It turns out that there are a bunch of small-time producers in Belarus that make a few garments at a time and then sell them at periodic fashion markets. I wanted to see one, so Tamara invited me to the next, a Valentine's Day extravaganza that they set up in the corridors of a small (but fancy) shopping mall.

Alla didn't really want to go. She doesn't like to shop anyway, doesn't like crowds, and prefers a more classic look. Besides, she had somewhere else to go, so I set out on my own. Walking to the mall, I enjoyed seeing festive decorations all over the city. Store managers tied vast quantities of balloons to their storefronts, and the City of Minsk set up a stage in a main square and invited vendors to sell snacks and souvenirs, and I even saw a courier delivering a huge heart-shaped box of roses.

I reached the fashion market at opening time, and the last few vendors hadn't even fully assembled their displays. I got to see everything. Most vendors limited themselves to just one rack, and each vendor's rack differed from all the others. It was a festival of originality. Shoppers began to arrive. Stylish shoppers. Interesting people. I had a good time exploring the first floor, and finally reached a caricature artist drawing portraits for free. She didn't have a client at the moment I arrived, so she invited me to sit down. I figured I'd sit still for five minutes and get an amusing picture of myself. In fact, however, I had to sit still for a lot longer than that and she captured me in a way I've never been captured before. She wanted to roll my portrait into a tube and secure it with a rubber band, but I liked the portrait way too much to roll up, so I asked her to hold it until I could go across the street and buy a frame and a plastic folder for safe travel home.

Later, Alla and our friend Elena came downtown and we went out for lunch together. Then I talked them into coming back to the fashion market. This time, the hallways were crowded and we had to squeeze between the shoppers. Only I bought anything (a scarf woven in a traditional Belarusian pattern and some chocolate truffles) but everybody had a great time.

Top dollar

I still enjoy going to the big market near our apartment to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and to hobnob with the vendors. I have a few favorites, people I've trusted for a long time and whom I enjoy seeing. Alla has been skeptical about one of these favorites, because I'm not as attentive as she would be to prices and sometimes my total bill from this one comes out higher than it might have been had I chosen a different vendor.

Yesterday I needed some extra vegetables for a recipe I wanted to cook, so I went down to see Tehrana. Tehrana is generous with me, sometimes embarrassingly so, and I'm completely confident in her prices. But on my way to her stand, I passed by Armenya. Armenya is the one Alla worries about, and she sells mostly fruits in the wintertime. I couldn't pass by without saying hello, and she urged me to buy something. She had some nice looking pomegranates, and I haven't had any in a month or two so I asked her to choose me a couple of them. They were kind of expensive, but I added a zucchini anyway because Tehrana doesn't sell zucchini either. The bill came out to $10. Or was it $15? I'm not completely sure. I knew Alla wouldn't like that, but there I was and I did want to have pomegranate. But then Armenya went for the combination sale. Would I like a taste of mango? Yes, it was delicious, so I agreed to buy one. Suddenly the bill skyrocketed to over 600,000 rubles. That's like thirty bucks! I thought I must be confused, so I got out my phone and checked the exchange rate.

I certainly couldn't go home and tell Alla I'd bought four ordinary things and spent thirty dollars. She'd never let me go to the market again. So I told Armenya that I didn't want the mango. She negotiated. Would I pay 550,000 rubles for everything? 500,000? That's still $25, and I knew better than to do that. No mango for me. Armenya adjusted the price back down to 210,000 rubles. Hadn't it been 310,000 before we added the mango? I was no longer sure, but ten bucks for two pomegranates and a little squash would already send Alla into orbit so I asked no further questions and paid up.

During the rest of my visit to the market I bought a lot more stuff and had trouble spending much money at all. I don't know what Armenya's deal might be, but perhaps I won't try to find out.

As for my original purpose, however, I'm happy to report that dinner came out well:

Pelmeni

Our neighbor Natasha makes delicious pelmeni. Knowing that I cook, and that I like them, she offered to teach me her recipe. One of the secrets of her cuisine is her husband, a hunter who often has some kind of special game meat to offer. This time, they had a wild boar.

Alla and I brought over a few other ingredients for the pelmeni and came to Natasha and Sasha's place after church on Sunday. When we arrived, the table was already laden with an array of beautiful and mouth-watering appetizers. I concentrated to get my salivary glands under control because we had work to do before we'd sit down at the table.

First, we had to make the dough. Natasha takes a far more artistic approach than most people I knew. We started by sifting a bunch of flour onto the counter. How did we know how much flour to sift? I dunno. Then she whizzed a couple of eggs and some water in the blender, commenting that she might add more water later. She did, but first she dumped the watery egg mixture onto the flour and started mixing it with her hands. She kneeded and kneeded, until the flour came to a muscular consistency.

I got to roll out the dough, batch by batch. I got the first one about right so they left me alone for the second one, which ended up a little too thick on one side. I compensated on the third one by rolling it until it became nearly transparent. Perhaps I had overdone the thinness, but everybody took my dough-disks in stride and stuffed them with the meat mixture. We started with a LOT of meat, and Alla and I figured we'd have to make meatballs with the extra meat. But as it worked out, we exactly finished the meat when we finished up the dough.

As they say, however, "The proof's in the pudding," and we all looked forward to sitting down to the table. We worked slowly through the appetizers and batch after batch of pelmeni. I don't know how many I ate. I probably set some sort of a record, or at least a personal best. We had a great time, with delicious food and delightful conversation. It felt like a holiday.

To see all the photos, click here and look near the top of the page.

They still don't understand me

I noticed that my glasses case is beginning to get worn around the edges. It’ll last a while, but since I had a hard time finding such a small one I figured I’d better start looking when it’s convenient. With that in mind, I stopped into a little shop near home and said, in Russian, “I came to see if you have a case the size of these glasses.” I took them off and showed them to her.

“What diopter?” she asked me.

“I just want a case,” I replied.

She walked over and opened up a display cabinet. I stepped behind her and saw that the cabinet contained glasses that looked vaguely similar to mine, but no glasses cases at all.

“No,” I corrected her, “I just want a case.”

“A case!?” she asked incredulously. “They’re over here.” (She only had big ones.)

I walked out of the store trying to figure out the difference between what I said and what she said. I played it over and over in my mind. They sounded about the same to me, and I couldn’t immediately identify the important difference. Finally, I figured it out: I said “fotliar” and she said “fotlyar.” They probably look about the same to my readers who don’t speak Russian, and they sound about the same to me. But I got tripped up, again, with a diphthong. I’m not sure diphthongs even exist in Russian, and the second variant, the Russian spelling, includes a vowel we don’t have at all in English: “ya.” Yes, “ya” is a vowel, and I’m told it’s not a diphthong. Here it is: “Я.”

I’ll probably get directly to the glasses cases next time I try.

[Addendum, a few days later: Alla points out that my REAL mistake was in the first vowel. It's futlyar, not fotlyar.]