Moscow Day Four. Country

Morning - The New Jerusalem (probably not this one). It's a big church outside Moscow, built in an area which for some reason resembled Jerusalem to the Russian Orthodox priests who built it. Let's see - plains, a river, grass and trees and old Russian christian women. Very Jerusalem. And a bunch of weddings, of course. We've already seen some bride-and-grooms around in the Kremlin area etc. Hadar liked the beauty-contest style witnesses.

Then - Zhenja's dacha. It is made of real, unprocessed wood glued together with some organic substance, by Belarusian muzhiks. It is not a Finnish ready-made house. Respect that. It stands on the bank of a large man-made lake (technically, a Soviet water reservoir) that's so long that it looks like a river.

I demanded to go to the forest immediately to gather mushrooms. The forests of the Moscow region are rich with mushrooms. They are also really really big. And there are a lot of trees there. I love the forests of Moscow region.

The weather was perfect for the end of September, which also means that it was perfect for mushrooms. We found a lot of them. Everyone, including all the kids, knew exactly which mushrooms are good and which are poisonous. That's one thing i forgot completely.

When we came back to the dacha we made food with all the mushrooms. My writing is so bad, because words can't convey the goodness of making a fresh natural meal in Russian countryside.

Misha made lamb roast. It smelled good.

As the night came down the children went out to sit by the fire and tell each other frightening stories, while we, the older folk, drank Georgian wine and talked about digital cameras and modern work ethics. Roma called himself "Mastodon" - he said that he's completely behind the technology. He proceeded to tell us that as far as he's concerned all information technology is crap. Spreadsheets and email make a lot of information available to him, what is he supposed to do with it? It doesn't make him more productive, not a tiny bit. Then the children ran inside and told that Chuchundra nibbled the electricity cables (really).

After Roma sent them to sleep, he told us about his cat. His cat can't come into the bedroom during the night to sleep on the bed, 'cuz the door is closed, but it makes everyone acknowledge his presence by taking a dump by the door so the smells comes in under it. Email is the same: it comes to the boss swiftly bypassing the secretary, who used to filter phonecalls.

I agreed and went to sleep.