We spent the long weekend in Korosten to celebrate Orthodox Easter with Igor’s family. We also celebrated Denis’ 16th birthday (Igor’s nephew) and the 17th wedding anniversary of Oksana and Vova, Igor’s sister and brother-in-law and the proud parents of the handsome birthday boy. We knew it would be 3 days of eating, drinking, laughing, and relaxing, plus some tough moments as it was the first family celebration since the death of Igor’s grandmother.
We took our time heading up there on Saturday, spending the beautiful morning with a new colleague, her husband and their 1.5 year old daughter. They’ve been in Kyiv about 3 weeks, and are still trying to get oriented and settled in. We took them to the farmer’s market and the supermarket, and generally enjoyed getting to know them better. Their daughter is just as cute as can be, and they are a very nice couple- she’s just a year younger than me, and we seem to have a lot in common. I’m looking forward to spending more time with both her and her parents.
We took a roundabout way to Korosten, driving first to Ivankiv for a quick visit with my friend Valentina, whom I was supposed to visit last weekend, when car trouble nixed those plans. Valentina is an amazing artist, poet, and lover of traditional Ukrainian arts and crafts. Her real speciality is “floristica”, making beautiful pictures from dried flowers and leaves. She spends tens, sometimes, hundreds of hours on a creation – each unique, each very delicately and purposefully designed and created. The colors, the designs, the types of flowers and leaves, even the arrangment of the scene – it all is created in a specific way for good fung shui. Sometimes they are so detailed and so intricately crafted that it’s only when you look at a picture up superclose do you realize it’s not a painting but instead made from hundreds of tiny petals. They are really breathtaking. I am the proud owner of 3 of her works of art, my favorite of which is called “Sea Fantasy”, with two beautiful blue goldfish with billowing tails, swimming with a school of tiny fish in a coral reef. Just breathtaking.
I have about ten of Valentina’s pictures that I am trying to help her sell – she’s an extremely talented artist, but not so hot at business. She ends up giving away a lot of her pictures because she’s just so sweet and she loves to give people presents. But with two sons in university, she really needs the money. I’ve sold two of her pictures so far, and I figured her earnings would be especially useful now with Easter and the upcoming May holidays. I was also excited to finally see for myself her flower garden I’ve heard so much about. Did I mention that she grows all the flowers and dries them herself? Her house and yard were even more fantastic than I had imagined. She gave us a tour of her house, which really is more like a greenhouse at a botanical garden. Dozens of different kinds of plants in every room, each with a special trait and purpose. Every room also had stacks of books with bits of newspaper sticking out from between the pages – her drying method. She opened one book and casually flipped through probably twenty pages, each with one or two delicate petals carefully arranged and pressed. I can’t even imagine how many thousands – maybe millions? – of petals and leaves she has pressed and drying in her house! It was really amazing. It’s still too early for much to be blooming in her garden, a few tulips were up, but she pointed to different spots and described what would be coming up. I can’t wait to see that garden again in June or July! Selling Valentina’s pictures not only makes me happy that I can help her with some much needed (and well-earned) income, but I also look forward to seeing her and her garden when I deliver her money. After the short visit with Valentina, we enjoyed the drive through the countryside. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and it was fun to drive with the sunroof open.
We arrived in Korosten in early evening, had a light meal, and then headed to the family banya. Igor’s father built a parnaya banya (steam bath) years ago, but it hadn’t been in working order for a couple of years so I never could try it before. I’ve heard many a banya story, and was always quite curious about them, but have never had the opportunity to try a real Russian banya before. I was also especially curious about the infamous tradition of beating yourself with birch branches. I just couldn’t even imagine what it was like. Igor loves saunas and banyas, with an insane passion even. I don’t enjoy the dry heat of a sauna so much, but I occassionally go to a sauna with him mostly because I enjoy being with Igor and I like seeing the pleasure that he gets from a good long bake. He was excited to introduce me to his beloved banya, and in retrospect admitted that he got kind of carried away and should have introduced me more slowly to the experience. It wasn’t traumatic, it was just surprising and temporarily unpleasant.
The banya house has a two rooms, plus a small corridor lined with windows. The first small room has hooks for hanging up your clothes, a couple stools, and the small metal door of the wood-burning stove. The next room has a shower head hanging from the ceiling and a bath, and the door to their small banya, which is kind of like a closet. It is long enough for two people to lay end to end, and just slightly wider than a person. A small metal door at one end opens to a small wood-burning fireplace, from which a long, wide metal tube extends the length of the banya and which is lined along its sides with fist-sized stones. You open the wooden door and step up high to get onto the a long wooden shelf which is fixed right above the metal tube. I crawled up and in, not really crazy about the smallness of the space. The wooden shelf on which you sit was really hot and I found it very uncomfortable to sit on. Igor gave me a two-by-four board to slip under my bum, but that didn’t help with my legs and other parts touching the shelf. I was trying to handle it gracefully, he had such a huge grin on his face and was so happy to be sharing his beloved banya with me!
He told me to stretch out my legs, and then he started gently whacking them with a fistful of long birch branches covered with leaves, called a venik. The leaves had been soaking in water, and the aroma was really pleasant. But the whacking was a bit weird, I have to say. It’s like an exfoliant, scraping away the layers of dead skin cells as well as dirt and grim. After a short venik session, Igor filled a dipper with water and splashed the stones lining the metal tube. Steam billowed up and it was HOT. I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. That was the part that later Igor admitted he should have warned me about. The steam lasts just 15-20 seconds and then dissipates, but it was so intense it freaked me out. There was no way he was getting me back in that thing, so we took one of the requisite breaks. We sat in the first room with the stools and drank a glass of beer.
After we’d cooled off a bit, Igor was ready to go in again, but I still wasn’t feeling good about it. He explained the whole ritual (it really is a ritualistic process in the banya), how it works, what to expect, etc. You steam, beat yourself with the venik, cool off under the cold shower, sit in the resting room and drink and snack, and start the cycle over again. It can go on for several hours, until “you’re done”. How do you know you’re done? Your skin is good and red, and turns white when you touch it. There’s no set time for everyone, each person is different.
Igor steamed a few more times, and I threw the water on the rocks for him. He closed the door tight and I could hear him whacking away with the venik. Eventually he got me to go in again, but we agreed no more steaming rocks for me. He gave my back a good workover with the venik. I finished up and went back to the house while he stayed another ten minutes or so. “How was it”, his mom asked me. “Interesting.” When Igor came back in the house, I started to say the traditional post-shower phrase “s lyokim parom”. Anya taught me that phrase when I first moved to Tvarditsa. I remembering asking what it meant and she said she didn’t really know, it was just what you said to some after they took a shower or bath. Kind of like a “hope you had a good bath”. Literally it means “with light steam” but expressed in the Russian way of congratulating someone on the occassion of an event – as in “I congratulate you with your birthday” or “I congratulate you with your light steam”. Sounds strange, I know, and I could never understand the phrase – that is until I said it to Igor after his good steam! Nothing like a little cultural context to put some meaning into a language.
Sunday was Easter, which meant the end of the Great Fast (Veliki Post’), or 40 days when strict observers do not eat meat or dairy products. Igor’s father keeps post’ strictly (it is also observed during advent before Christmas), and usually Igor observes it just the last week before Easter. This year he decided to observe it for about a month. I don’t know who was more anxious for it to end- me or him. I swear, all the man could talk about the last week was meat. I think he was even dreaming about meat. Since I’m a vegetarian, he didn’t find much sympathy from me in his suffering, but I sure was suffering from his endless talk about every possible variety of meat.
Ivan went to church in the middle of the night (2 or 3 am?) for the Easter mass, loaded up like everyone else with his basket of food to be blessed by the priest. The rest of us got up around 6:30 to have the first big feast of the day. We start with the hard-boiled eggs dyed red (boiled with onion skins to make the special deep red color). Each person holds one egg in his or her fist, and then you tap one end of your egg onto the end of your neighbor’s egg, to see which egg cracks. Then you flip them and do the other ends. It’s fun to see who has the strongest egg, who’s egg can crack the most other eggs. Then you peel and eat. Then you dive into the overflowing table. There were a couple veg dishes added to the usual meat-laden menu for me, and I was quite content. Of course Nina fussed and worried that I didn’t have “anything” to eat, which was quite far from the truth. I did just fine, and I was happy to not over-indulge as often happens at these celebrations.
We sat around eating and drinking and talking for a couple of hours, then everyone retired back to their beds to sleep off the hard work of the morning. Around noon, Igor and I went with his father to the cemetery to make the traditional offering at the graves of departed relatives. Then we went to their village house to check on and feed the animals. Ivan bought a sheep last winter, which gave birth to a lamb the day before our wedding in December. He’s growing up fast, and both Igor and his father were speculating when he’ll be ready for shashliki (i.e., barbeque). It was a beautiful day, and Igor and I strolled around the field while he dad tended to the sheep and rabbits, enjoying the fresh air and quiet village sounds.
Back home, after another resting period, we headed next door to Oksana’s house for Denis’ birthday celebration. Turning 16 is an important event – you get your own passport, which is akin to becoming a legal adult in many ways. You are no longer just a note in your parents’ passports. Denis is a typical moody teenager, and the celebration was obviously more fun for his parents and grandparents, but he suffered through for a respectable amount of time and then was released to go hang out with his friends. We continued the party without him.
After a couple hours Igor and I were both ready to get as far away from food as possible. We decided to go for a walk in the beautiful park in the center of town. It was a sunny, warm day and it seemed like most of Korosten had the same idea as us. I still sometimes find myself scandalized to see people drinking alcohol openly the street, especially bottles of vodka at 8 in the morning (open containers are legal in Ukraine). Every once in a while though, I get a kind of guilty pleasure out of walking through the park with a beer. This was one of those days when I wanted to indulge, so Igor bought me a bottle and I sipped at it as we strolled.
The evening was quiet at home, everyone was satiated and relaxed. Monday we lounged in bed late reading our books. We started back to Kyiv around 1, driving through a light drizzle most of the way. I had a workout scheduled at 6 with Elena, and boy was it a tough one. I’m glad I planned it that way, though – it kept me motivated throughout Monday to take it easy with the food!
All in all, a very nice weekend. And Nina sent us home with enough leftovers for an army!
Anka in Kyiv 