Russia: Day Five - Ivanovo

 Have you ever had a moment when you see something being done wrong and you just want to say, “Hey, excuse me, but why don’t you just....?”  That’s what happens this morning.
  We’re leaving our cozy little nest at the Plyos Motel and are all packing up and gathering in the parking lot of what is a marketplace on some days.  The garbage men are cleaning up the flotsam-and-jetsam from yesterday's market - which we missed.  There’s a huge truck and just two men for the job. They’re trying to empty the dumpster and one of them has to climb up into it and shovel things around and tamp it all down. There’s got to be an easier way.  But maybe it’s always been done this way, and means are limited.  Still...

We bid a fond farewell to Plyos and the Volga, but take part of it along with us.  In the person, or rather persons, of Prince Andreï and our loyal photographer NikolaÏ.  We’re headed to Ivanovo and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  The Prince will officiate, with the requisite laying of flowers and a short speech.  It’s raining and those of us who don’t have umbrellas get soaked, which includes Vladimir as well as all the soldiers standing at attention, expressionless, around the monument.  The presiding official assigned to greet us, Lieutenant-Colonel Pavel Phikine, head of Ivanovo’s regional center for patriotic education (hmmmm), has made such an effort for this meeting with foreigners that he’s shaved himself raw.  We are humbled.
  Lording over the grave and its eternal flame is a modernistic statue of women mourning their husbands and fathers.  And red flags all around, lots of red military flags from the Soviet era, snapping in the wind.  Again we are reminded that it has been 70 years since the killings of World War II ended, and that Russia - or rather the USSR - lost so many people, both military and civilian.
  After the ceremony, we say good-bye to Andreï and Nikolaï, who have given me a real connection to at least one part of the Russian people.  I will not forget them.
  In their stead, as guide, we have the blonde Elena of the smiling blue eyes.

Another part of World War II - one that links the USSR and France - is the Normandie-Niemen Regiment, a fighter squadron of the French Air Force that fought on the Eastern Front in Europe as of mid-1943.  (It still exists.)  De Gaulle sent a group of Free French Forces fighter pilots to help the Soviets and they trained on Soviet planes here in Ivanovo.  Led by Jean Tulasne (initially), they fought in three campaigns and destroyed 273 enemy aircraft.  For which they received many citations, including France’s Légion d’Honneur and The Soviet Order of the Red Banner.  Four of the French pilots were named Heroes of the Soviet Union, which is understandable when you learn that the Germans were under orders to shoot any French pilots captured.  On the spot.  French pilots flying Soviet planes backed by French and Soviet mechanics.  The kind of cooperation the world could use more of sometimes.

  We learn all this, and more, at a working-class high school which also has a museum facette to it.  We’re shown through many rooms of memorabilia and students present part of the displays.  Although they’re all dressed the same - off-white shirts, a blue bandana and a matching blue cap - how they wear that uniform differs greatly from one to the next.  Most of the girls toe the vestimentary line, but one of them spotlighted for a speaking role is very shapely... and knows how to put it to her advantage.  Others, especially the boys, are the gangly teenagers you find in any country around the world.  But all are proud to show the Frenchies all they know about the friendship linking their country to ours.
  Jacques and Kamilla say a few words of thanks and appreciation before we head off to lunch at a modern hotel where we are given American-sized portions of beets, borscht, pirogi and then liver with rice, all washed down with vodka or kissel, a berry juice.  Not a potato on the horizon.  I tease Vladimir that Russia is much like Michigan:  too much food and too bad roads.

On the way to Shuya, there’s a joke fest in the bus.  (Remember the vodka?)  Chiefly Paul and Gallina, who is proving to be quite a corker.  More and more fun each day.

  In Shuya we start at a Vodka Museum, which also obviously has a showroom.  Of all the buildings we have seen so far, the vodka factory is the ritziest:  clean, well-tended red brick, wrought-iron decoration.  Next to it?  A junkyard.  Opposites that we’re getting used to.  All countries have them; the only difference is that here they’re geographically closer to one another so they stand out more.  There was this same glaring dichotomy across from St Nikolaï Convent as well.
  I’m not vodka at all, but there are three things I do love here:  the display of cut glass bottles to buy, the life-sized grinning peasant doll standing by a cut-out of a vodka bottle on the landing where you can’t miss him, and the poster in the entry courtyard of a plump, happy, babushka-ed grandma and the words: “Granny’s life is more fun” (with their brand of vodka).
  There’s another museum on our dance card also, one that deals in lacquerwork, and another goodie bag, but my mind is spinning by all we’ve seen.

It’s getting late.  We have to get to our hotel.  And it’s a nice surprise.  We’ll be spending two nights at a summer camp in the countryside.  There are individual houses and Ursula and I get rooms opposite one another.
  Dinner is in a separate building which houses the kitchens and dining room.  It also serves as a banquet room room when needed.  (As we leave Saturday morning, they’ll be setting up for a wedding luncheon.)  The food served up is varied and the best thing is something they call pelmeni, which are dumplings but my French friends translate them as “pillows”.   Delicious!  The side dishes are sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and yellow bell pepper, all fresh.  For dessert, chaï and poppyseed buns.  A true Russian meal, evidently.
  Then it’s off briskly through clouds of mosquitoes to our separate rooms for a good night’s sleep.