Last Year's Man

Now that I’ve experienced New Years in Russia, I understand why they get so excited for it.  This was seriously one of the most fun adventures I’ve had in my whole short life.    I went with my friends Aigul and Katya to picturesque Kristal, a nearby village where Aigul’s mother lives.  Every year, the whole family gathers there to eat, drink, play games and make merry.  We arrived in the early afternoon, before most of the other guests.  There was a lot of cooking going on, so we decided to go to the nearby banya.

An explanatory word before I go on: Aigul’s mom, Venira, lives in a modern apartment building, so don’t get the wrong idea.  There are lots of little old wooden houses too, but Venira lives in an apartment complex near the tuberculosis hospital where she works.

So, the banya.  This is a traditional Russian bathhouse/sauna, built out of wood and some metal for the stove.  In the stove you boil lots of water and in the water place bushels of some kind of leaf (birch?) for a wonderful aroma.  (Until last year, Venira’s apartment didn’t have hot water, so they did all their bathing in the banya.)  I had never been in one, but I’d seen and heard a lot about them.  When we arrived, Aigul’s uncle Leonard was carrying big buckets of water to the banya and urged us to go see if it was hot enough.  We walked behind the apartments to where every tenant has their own banya and storage facility.  Hot enough tt was, so we stripped down and jumped in.  At first, it was awkward taking a naked schvitz with my student, more awkward still when she offered to give me the traditional beating with birch branches.  But honestly, the experience was so relaxing and refreshing, it took about one second for me to lose my inhibitions.  Anyway only Americans are embarrassed about being naked, Europeans don’t care.  We came out feeling so warm and wonderful, the walk back to the house didn’t even seem cold.

The guests, in addition to us, included a bunch of aunts, uncles and cousins who I never quite got straight, especially as the Russian word for cousin is “second-born brother/sister,” so they often just call each other brothers and sisters.  I fell in love with a three-year old hooliganka who was very shy with me at first, but by the end of our time there was yelling “Ebi!  Chase me!”  Venira also has two friendly orange cats who are mother and son, and who come and go as they please.  We started eating at 8 at night and didn’t stop til, well, they’re probably still going.  The menu was chicken, duck, assorted Russian salads (the best is called “herring under a fur coat”), cold cuts, cheeses, cabbage pie, home-made pizza and probably other things I’m forgetting.  We drank wine and champagne, the men drank vodka.  For dessert there was fruit, chocolates and my homemade oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookies.  As we ate, we played games like mad-libs and held lotteries for embarrassing improvisations.  Venira dressed up like Grandfather Frost (the Russian Santa Clause character) and gave out gifts.  2009 is the year of the bull, so a lot of the gifts and games were cow-themed.  

The TV was on in the background all night, but set to a music video channel, not the traditional New Years movie “The Irony of Life.”  At midnight, President Medvedev congratulated us all on the holiday, although everyone assured me that Putin did it better.  Instead of “Auld Lang Syne,” they play the Russian national anthem.  We lit firecrackers at the dinner table, then went outside where we joined all the neighbors in shooting off fireworks.  At the end of the night, Venira’s neighbor with whom I’d sat at dinner, pulled me aside and gave me a volume of Pushkin as a gift.  At the time I didn’t understand why she was asking me if I had my own copies the Russian classics at home or only in the library, but I guess at some point in the evening she ran home and grabbed this book for me.  What a sweet broad.

We went to sleep, three on a pull-out couch and maybe 7 in each room, drunk, full and happy.  I awoke the next morning at noon to find all last night’s leftovers pulled out, plus some new dishes.  The next two days proceeded as the first night - games, food, drink, songs.  The family is from Bashkoristan so they sang a bunch of Bashkiri songs, and at one point Aigul even busted out the old accordion.  Now I’m back home and though I’m enjoying the peace and quiet, part of me misses the noise, the children, the cats.  Everyone urged me to come again, and those from elsewhere invited me to visit their towns.  Which is good, since I left my gloves there...

2009: so far, so good.