My previous post ended with this “live simply-be happy” slogan attributed much to a rural family on the outskirts of a Siberian city who all seemed to be pretty content with their life despite what here may be well considered as poor living conditions.

This time we are in Barnaul, which is about 3 hours away from Novosibirsk by express-train. Barnaul is a short hike to Gorno-Altaysk area which is uniformly considered one of the best outdoors passtime spots in Russia: hiking, rafting, canoeing, fishing. The mountain air is crisp and clean, the water is ice-cold and tasty, the vegetation is juicy bright green, and the ticks are plentiful in May. Sorry for that last one, they always sneak in and make things very uncomfortable.

Barnaul seemed to me a much smaller and much gloomier than Novosibirsk and Tyumen. I did not take many photographs there because, even though I was with two other people most of the time, I was always under impression that it may be wise not to show my camera. I may have just imagined most of the risk, but it’s like the fear of spiders or centipedes - no rationale, just the instinctive fear.

The village we went to was about a 40-minute ride by car from Barnaul. The old dark wood house of our hosts was shyly hiding behind a few new brick two-three story cottages: a building company would buy old houses, demolish them and erect the fancy mansions in the hopes of selling them to the wealthy urban folks. Again, for those who are unfamiliar with the Russian culture, the importance of “dacha” (a summertime residency in the country that flourished probably the most during the Soviet era) is comparable with that of tea-drinking - again, see the previous entry on Novosibirsk. However, the economy did the back triple flip and the white brick monsters stay silent staring at the wooden survivors with their empty unglassed eyesockets.

The house is very old and tiny: a family of five share two rooms and a kitchen. The bigger room is where the mother sleeps, and her two daughters. The walls have a few big cracks in them and the color has long faded. It actually provides for an unbelievable background, but, putting my photographic excitements aside, I can see the girls’ frustration over the look of the interior.

Besides the work around the house (mainly fulfilled by grandma) and the garden, there is not much to do in the village. The older girl has to attend the mandatory two-week gardening at the school garden. Students - who are few - are required to work at the school garden five days a week, from 10 to 2pm, having 10-minute breaks every hour. While we were there we witnessed a couple of girls taking too long of a self-imposed break in the middle of the day, and were dismissed by their supervisor (a biology teacher) with the 0 hour record for the day. They will have to come work in the garden for one more day after the required two weeks are over.

As explained by one of the supervisors, a considerable part of school lunch comes from the garden. Since the kids work in the garden, they get their lunch for free. He argued, though, that on weekends there is noone to look after the plants, so a lot of produce doesn’t survive (such hydration-sensitive vegetables as cucumbers, for example).
Although the teenagers have a totally different vision of their passtime on a summer day, the idea doesn’t seem to be irrational…

Next stop - Saratov (heading back to the west!)