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Went to Listvianka today, on the 11 am marshrutka. Telling V.P. on Saturday that I was going to Listvianka on Monday was enough to keep her happy the whole weekend: she didn’t ever look disapproving when I spent hours in my room working on my Baikal studies paper, as she saw it all as getting things out of the way so I could go to Listvianka. The ride was very pretty; now that there’s snow the white birches don’t show up much, and instead it’s the pines (and I guess cedars) that stand out. It was very foggy, as it so often is, but in a way that enhanced the scenicness rather than hid it.

Misfortune, however, struck when we got out of the marshrutka. I took out my wallet, as one so often does when wishing to pay for things, and gave the driver 100 rubles. I got change and put it in my pocket. We all (Ivan, Eddie, Elissa, me) went into a cafe, about 30 seconds from the bus stop. I looked for my wallet. It was no longer in my possession.

I have no idea how this happened. There were hardly any people around, and it’s hard to see how the wallet could have been stolen. It’s also hard to see how I would just casually toss a wallet away and not notice. I guess I could have dropped it in the marshrutka. In any case, my life is now greatly complicated. And a pall was sort of cast over the rest of my day.

Which is a shame, because the day was really a lot of fun, other than wallet-losing. We ate in the cafe (actually the food there was quite awful), we walked around the village, Eddie threw lots of rocks at the frozen creek but failed to break it, I drank very cold and very good water from a hole someone had made in the creek, and we went to a very nice banya. The banya was what was really fun about the day. It was in this wooden lodge on a hill over Baikal, and while we waited for the oven to be heated up we sat in a sunny, hunting-lodge-like room with a big window overlooking Baikal and watched some awful American movie made worse by Russian dubbing. After sitting in the banya for long enough not to be able to stand it anymore we would run outside in our bathing suits, screaming, and roll around and throw snow at each other. Why don’t we have banyas in the US? They are so amazing- I don’t know how to begin to describe the feeling of every grain of dirt and drop of cold coming streaming out of your body, and the bitter smell and taste of the steam coming off the stones and metal pipe. And after being in a banya you can’t be cold for the next several hours- I think the temperature-sensing faculties of your body are just so confused by the extremes of hot and cold of the experience that they just stop bothering registering. Which is very nice if the rest of your day will involve walking around in Siberia. It’s really rather incredible- you walk down a road on which you remember being freezing cold a couple hours before, pre-banya, and your body is a perfectly comfortable temperature.

The other item of note is my recent capitulation to the Russian practice of putting mayonnaise on everything. It’s sort of alarming. Yesterday I decided I wanted some salad of some kind, so made one from shredded cabbage and tomato. And that didn’t look like it would taste all that good without dressing of some kind, and of course all there was was mayonnaise- and then it was really good. My excuse is that this is especially good mayonnaise, very refreshing and light. The tub says “mayonnaise provencale,” so it must be very sophisticated. And it’s from the Irkutsk Fatty Products Factory or something, so I’m eating local foods, just as the Second Vermont Republic folks advise. Today this mayonnaise made several appearances in my dinner.

Tuesday update:
Went to bus station, spent a long time standing in lines and asking people where things were and being yelled at. No wallets were turned in. I didn’t really think it would have been. I would call and cancel credit cards now but 1) I don’t know numbers to call, 2) my phone doesn’t have any money on it, as I apparently did something wrong when I thought I put money on it yesterday; I guess some Irkutsk resident unexpectedly got some money added to his or her phone, and 3) I’m just going to wait for Mama to call tonight and make her do it. Because I am such an irresponsible person.

Got two packages today, from Gammie and from Mama. So that was nice. I can live on chocolate in the train station now, in my penniless state. I think this wallet loss is judgment for my Scrooge-like miserliness. Oh, and the arrival of Mama’s package means I now have a flashdrive, so at least I can continue to complain and post my complaints on the internet! I know you’re all glad to hear that. As our good friend Julieta Venegas (or whatever her name is) says, “Yo no voy a llorar y decir, que no merezco eso, porque es probable que lo merezco pero no lo quiero.”

And as Lady Catherine De Berg says, I am most seriously displeased.