without title

A week ago the Orthodox Church celebrated Easter. I went to the midnight service in the church near the train station. I would give you further information, but it doesn’t seem very respectful to make flippant comments about what for everyone there was the highest religious event of the year, and I’m not very good at non-flippancy. There were many candles involved, and standing for many hours. It was sort of odd to celebrate Easter twice, actually. My favorite part of the day was how instead of saying “Happy Easter,” people greet each other on Easter by saying “Christ is risen!” to which the other person responds “He is risen indeed!” After reading this in my first-year Russian textbook, I had been waiting to get to be involved in this exchange ever since. Even people I didn’t know who called the house informed me that Christ was risen, not to mention the persons from whom I bought groceries. I bought an Easter cake at the bread kiosk and Adrienne and I ate it here at the Shulga compound.

The next day, Monday, was the big 40-th anniversary concert of my host family’s choir. This concert, held in the big Dram-Teatr, had been looming over the household for at least the past month. It all went off successfully, as far as I could tell. Only one choir member fainted on stage, the small children from the youngest choir who ran about the theater did so with as little noise as could be expected, the congratulatory speeches were much shorter than they could have been, and everyone got lots of flowers. It was all very grand and sequin-covered. Katya and some dignified older gentleman very theatrically led the ceremonies, complete with poems written for the occasion, solemn introductions, and those earnest assurances to the audience of the undying love of the performers that for some reason so fill Russian theaters and concert halls, and Katya’s gown (blue) had more sequins than anyone’s. Nastya directed the younger choir, sang with a choir of graduates, and gave her always-stellar performance of “O Happy Day.” Valentina Petrovna, oh course, was the big star, with costume changes, congratulations via video-clip from professors of local universities, celebration in the aforementioned poems, etc. I wondered more than ever how I ended up in this house. I feel like my presence is bringin down the house-hold glamour factor several points.

May 1 is Labor Day here. Nothing interesting happened. Apparently in the socialist past this was a huge deal and everyone went to big demonstrations and waved flags and yelled cool slogans, but no more. It was, however, a day off school and work, and since it was a Thursday, the school and work that would have been on Friday was moved to Sunday (can we do things like that in America, on a national level? I am impressed.). On Thursday night Sara, Julia, Ben, Joseph, and I left on the train for Ulan Ude, and we arrived at 6 in the morning after a very small amount of sleep. Heroically ignoring our exhaustion, we headed straight for the Giant Head of Lenin, tied with Baikal as the most important object in Siberia. In case you are unaware of this wonder of the modern world, the Giant Head of Lenin is a giant head of Lenin. It is the largest metal head in the world. The location of the corresponding body is unknown. This giant bald head rules over a giant, fairly empty square in the middle of Ulan Ude, and its grandeur and beauty are beyond description. Other activities of the day were a long quest to find these Buddhist temples several miles from the city, walking around said Buddhist temples, eating posi in the Central Market (in a cafe chosen on the basic of asking a passer-by where her favorite posi were), and going to the coolest concert ever in the world. It was called “Nomads,” and I think it was organized as a celebration of Buryat nationalism. Well not nationalism in a political sense, but pride in nation. Aside from the five of us, I think there were 3 other non-Buryats in the big, way-over-seating-capacity theater. We had bought the last 5 tickets early that morning, standing-room-only (we actually sat in the aisle in chairs taken from the cafe), and immediately after buying them the phone in the ticket office rang three times with people begging for tickets. I felt a little bad that we had taken tickets from actual dedicated fans of the performing artists, actually; these were truly dedicated fans. The first half of the concert was all traditional music, with an orchestra of folk instruments, throat singing, awesome clothing, etc. The enthusiastic, beaming little announcer would say things between all the songs like “I’m sure this music returns you to your childhood, and makes you and to get on a horse and ride far out across the plain and just listen, listen, listen to the steppe.” There were a bunch of visiting musicians from Mongolia. Though the announcer generally spoke Russian, he spoke Mongolian when speaking to the Mongolians, and the musicians always spoke Buryat or Mongolian to the audience, which seemed to understand the three languages equally. In the second half the orchestra of folk instruments had been removed, and it all came to resemble an odd karaoke bar. It was still pretty cool though. Mixed with Mongolian pop, a tango, a belly-dance, and lots of flute-playing was a rendition of “the American folk song” Amazing Grace on various traditional instruments and accompanied by ballet dancers. The announcer said that the melody made you want to fly out over the plain, over the steppe, across wide expanses, toward the mountains.” He has clearly never heard it played on an organ. There was a fairly long period of stirring speeches on the part of various representatives of various organizations on the subject of the conservation of Buryat culture and the celebration of the talent of all nations of the Mongolian language family, thanking the organizers of the concert, etc. In one of my favorite parts of Buryat/Mongolian culture, instead of flowers they would give silk scarves in one of the five colors of Tibetan Buddhism. When we were in Ulan Batar we were told that people usually gave blue there, as the national color of Mongolia, the nation of the sky; at this concert mainly white was given, and some yellow. One of the speech-givers, who cried with emotion, wished us all that our children would not forget their native language of Buryat, and that they would always propagandize Buryat culture. I think any future children of mine might have trouble with especially the first of those directives.

The only obstacle to my complete enjoyment of the concert was a rapidly-developing case of food-poisoning. Joseph and I were the only ones to get sick; we still haven’t figured out anything that we ate that everyone else didn’t. Lots of food was eaten that day. The obvious culprit is the posi; even if it was not, in fact, the posi, I am never eating posi again. The results were simply too miserable. We had to check out of our hotel at 7:00 am the next morning, and our train wasn’t until 2:40. We spent the intervening 7 and a half hours sitting still in various places. Luckily, it was a sunny day, and we were able to spend a lot of time sitting on bench in the main square, gazing at the Head.

The train ride home, on the express electrichka, was very pretty. The first few hours were through the forest-steppe, with wooden villages and goats and things out the window. Then we spent several hours along Baikal, on which the ice is breaking up very picturesquely. Luckily, all the tickets had been sold out except for first class, we we had a fairly comfortable place for sitting still in our sickness. Joseph and I were both better enough by dinnertime to eat yoghurt and bread.

I’m glad we went back to Ulan Ude, despite its merciless attack of my digestive system. It’s a nice little city, with snow-covered mountains visible, and a big head of Lenin, and lots of wooden houses, and just a general pleasant atmosphere. The cars stop for pedestrians. We never did get over that. I’m trying to think of more reasons why I liked Ulan Ude so much, but I can’t come up with anything better than pretty and pleasant. And even if I still don’t remember why anyone would ever want to eat food other than white bread, I’ve had my share of ice-cream and cookies in this life