Russia: Day Six, Part One - Shuya / Ponkino

Shuya

After a hearty breakfast at our summer camp base camp, washed down with lots of good strong tea, we head into Shuya, once a major commercial city for its linen industry.
  The bus drops us off and we’re loosed on the unsuspecting town, to wander wherever we want, with orders to meet at a certain time at a certain place.  I’d better stick with someone who speaks Russian or I’m toast!
  We set off in little groups that splinter gradually as shops attract some of us while others find some architectural detail interesting.  The wide pedestrian mall in the town center is a haven for parents with children. There’s even a little pony they can ride on.   We watch teen-age boys trying to pick up teen-age girls.  A scene that happens everywhere on this planet.
  Eventually Ursula and I end up at the bazaar, which seems to be organized by object sold.  There’s a farm woman selling just cucumbers, onions and herbs.  Another woman a few stalls down has only five pairs of shoes to sell, but also some lovely handmade brooms - a strange combination.

  Then we spot a woman of weathered beauty selling cut flowers, probably from her own garden.  We both eye her lovely pale pink peonies, just like the ones on my bushes at my Michigan home.  As I lean forward to smell their delicate fragrance, Ursula strikes up a conversation in Russian and learns her name is Lilia - Lily, a fitting name for a flower seller.  I have no idea what they’re saying to each other, but Lilia has a warm smile.  Eventually we say good-bye - one of the few Russian words I know - and Lilia hands Ursula the bouquet of peonies, as a gift to us visitors from so far away.  In spite of Lilia’s protests, Ursula manages to leave her some money and we head back to find the bus, having no idea how we’re going to keep these beautiful peonies from dying.   Lilia is someone else I will remember fondly, for her smile, her joy and her warmth to total strangers... as well as for her peonies.
  Which Ursula gives to Tatiana, who admired them.  Tatiana in turn offers them to the directress of the next stop:  the house of Pavlov, a wealthy merchant from times when the city grew rich from its linen trade.  The mansion is a preserved remnant of the city’s past splendor.  The staircase is majestic, the ceilings ornate, the chandeliers pure works of art. We’re treated to a show in the upstairs concert room.  First a waltz by an overly pale girl and a gangly boy; they’re not Fred and Ginger, but this is not Dancing With the Stars either, and they do a decent enough job.  Then it’s a concert of Russian ballads by an operatic soprano with too many flourishes but a good voice, accompanied by an excellent pianist of spinster appearance who looks brow-beaten for some unexplained reason.  The pianist was my favorite in this local talent show.
  Next comes a quick stop at a very modern local fabric store  - mostly linen - so that those of us who want to can do some shopping.  Paul buys two yards each of three different colors, to make himself shirts back in Paris.  Aude finds the ones she likes “too expensive”.  I find some patterns that are lovely and reasonable in price, but I just don’t want to carry all that back to France, and it wouldn’t fit in my suitcase anyway.

We’re expected at the tiny village of Ponkino for lunch and an afternoon of folklore and rural rambling, but en route we stop at a junkyard which has been turned into an outdoor art showroom.  Oil drums are given pipe legs to become steeds for knights, not in white satin but rather in scrap iron, their shields the tops of those oil drums.  Next to these horsemen is a hunter, and farther along a statesman with a scrap-metal quill pen for the document he’s written.  On shelves all around are bevies of old clocks, old crockery, old everything you could ever imagine.  There’s even an old motorcycle with sidecar that I photograph for my sidecar-maniac friend back home.  The ingenuity showcased here makes this one of the highlights of the trip for me.