Back to Russia, back to winter?!
Some really cool (not figuratively, either) spring weather
So when we arrived a few days ago very early in the morning, it was about 32 degrees and, as we were told, there had been a bit of snowfall the previous day. Even though it was nighttime, I could see that there was a dusting of snow in the grass as we were leaving the airport. The following day when we arose, we also saw a couple of brief snow flurries. It’s fairly unprecedented to see snow this late in the year but, given how far north we are (almost 60 degrees latitude), it can and does happen.
The video above, like the one below, shows a gathering of parishioners on the porch of the church we typically attend. They had joined together there in the singing of patriotic songs in celebration of May 9th, the day in Russia on which they celebrate the ending of World War 2. So, even more than 24 hours after our arrival, it was still quite cool during the day, something like mid-forties. At night it was getting down toward freezing.
Also noteworthy is the light/dark cycling here, even though there’s over one more month til the solstice (pegged at June 21st, as we all likely know). The photo below was taken a few days ago looking west at 9:30 at night. So blue sky can still be seen, though the sun has dropped a bit below the horizon.
Perhaps the best way to think of these daylight/darkness cycles here around this time of year and through mid-fall is that the periods we in America think of as twilight and dusk are greatly expanded and last much longer. By twilight I mean the point in the day when the sun is no longer visible in the sky, but is still illumining it and the blue firmament is still visible. Dusk, of course, is when it’s getting dark enough for streetlamps to come on and for cars to begin using headlights, though there is still enough ambient light to navigate easily on foot or by bicycle.
Though it’s finally started warming up here today, getting into the low 60’s, it was still quite cool over the weekend. The photo below shows the procession around the church on Thomas Sunday—just a couple of days ago—and people are clearly still warmly dressed.
Among the parishioners here is a police officer in uniform who is probably going to start his shift after the service ends. He is standing to the right in the photo with the word полиция (which translates into English as police) written across the back of his jacket.
Finally, a reminder of home encountered in a coffee shop we visited after the Liturgy this past Sunday, as seen in the photo below. It’s a pastry, sort of along the lines of a cinnamon roll but, instead of containing cinnamon, it’s made with a very popular dairy product here call tvorog. In the U.S., an analogous dairy product would be something like Ricotta cheese, though the less common product known in the U.S. as farmer’s cheese is a more precise analog.
The name of the pastry translates as the city name Dallas. So there we have an example of what Russians think of things American, though it remains unclear to me how they came up with such a label for a pastry product. I understand they have here a similar pastry made with cinnamon instead of cheese: that one is called Texas! I may post, in a later entry, a photo of one of those.