The excursion to Sviyazhsk

Sviyazhsk is an island about an hour’s bus ride west from Kazan in the Volga River. Sonia, Fouad and I had bought tickets last week for a day trip today. Thomas d3cided to join us and got his ticket a few days ago. Ther3 wer3 15 of us in the bus and the tour was in Russian. All fou4 of usknow a little bit of Russian so we figured, between the four of us we might understand something. And we managed pretty well. But th most amazing thing to us was tha5 our guide started talking as soon as the bus drove away and she didn’t take a breath for the next hour. She droned on constantly with so much information, you just couldn’t process it all. And it’s weird the way Russian female tour guides talk. There’s a certain intonation and pitch to their voice tha5 makes then sound like they’re reciting the Russian constitution from memory. There is a real difference between thei4 conversational tone of voice and their prof3ssional tone of voice. When we got off the bus, we all headed to the bathrooms then climbed up the stairs to the actual island. It’s about 70 feet above the river and we could look around and see men ice fishing all around us. Even a skidoo went sliding past. We saw several cathedrals and the place where the revolutionists executed their opponents in the early part of the 20th century. Some of the information outsid3 of some of the buildings as written in English so that was a big help. When we went into the cathedrals to have a look, one woman was always admonishing Sonia to put a scarf or hat on her head! They were really very strict about it. And, of course, our guide was talking the entire time. She was just full of information. The island’s relatively small so w3 were able to cover the whole thing in three hours. We had a half our break for tea and a really great pastry. I had made some cheese sandwiches and had chips and Oreos with me, so this was our lunch break.Then we watched at a reenactment guy teach a guide how to shoot a crossbow. Afterwards, we met at the museum, as instructed by the guide, (See? We did understand some things.), and got a tour of the museum from anothe4 guide who talkecjust exactly like the guide who accompanied us. It was unfortunate that the museum visit was a guid3 tour because the exhibits all had English explanations and I would have gotten a lot more out of it if I had just ha$ time to read the things. One really interesting thing about the island is that it’s covered with stray cats. There’s a story behind this, but I was not able to figure it out. I’m going to have to research that one. In any case, afte4 the museum tou4 we hopped back on the bus, where I promptly fell asleep and headed back to Kazan. Sonia and I had been invited to Matthew and Valeriya’s for dinner, but when we arrived home we had the message that Valeriya wasn’t feeling well, so we’ve postponed it for a week. No problem. It gave me plenty of time to FaceTime back to the States and just sor5 of mentally prepare myself for this week. I may have already mentioned that the school will receive guests again this week and I’m supposed to give a cooking demonstration with the kids. This will have to be well-planned!