Back to Vladimir

It’s precious rare that as a traveler you get the chance to visit a place a second time, especially if you’re as flighty as I am. I tend to be of the sentiment that once you’ve been there, you’ve at least seen the most of what you need to see, so why go back and waste precious time? Rather, you should be covering new territory!

Of course this mentality is fundamentally backward, because if you think about it, a city for example, is never the same; it’s always changing, just like the seasons. Which brings up an even better point: if you visit a place in the winter, will it look the same in the summer? If you’re in California where seasons don’t exist too much, the answer is probably “no,” but in Russia, there is absolutely a difference. As much as Moscow blossomed into a glorious green natural city this summer, I knew that outside of Moscow must be even better of a transformation, so my travel buddy Luke and I ventured off to Vladimir for a SECOND time, to see what we could see. And Luke had two revelations, just in time to send him off home to England.

And of course, as predicted, after 6 months, the transformation was even more acute, since the last time we had laid eyes on the place it had been buried in snow, and we had missed out on the slow thaw of spring. As happy as I was to see our friends again, I was even more thrilled when we ran off to tiny little Bogolyubovo, with the most perfect churn in Russia.

Diana’s friend explained to us that the church was created around an icon. As the workers tried to drag the large icon to a far off church outside of Vladimir, they soon tired of their work, and after 5 miles or so dropped the icon and rested. They looked around and decided, “To heck with that! We’ll just build a church here!” and so they did. And despite all of the swarms of mosquitoes and tourists, it was still just as peaceful as I remembered it. We swam in the river as it started to rain, but it didn’t dampen our spirits, or our fire, thankfully. “This is what makes Russia so perfect,” reveled Luke, as we sat on the river bank grilling sausages. “Russians are so in tune with nature, it’s their religion.” I laughed as Diana aptly built up the fire, our little elven friend who wouldn’t have surprised me if she had told me that she had been born in the nature.

This was even more evident when we made it to her parents’ summer home, and saw what a magical garden her mother and her had created. As Diana had promised, we experienced “shashlik” at her family’s summer home, or “dacha” and even had a chance to spend time in the ever popular banya. I’m not sure what could be more Russian than barbequing meat over a wood fire, or drinking homemade apple juice with fresh veggies, but Diana’s family, as expected was perfectly hospitable, and we talked and laughed until the fire burned down, and her father stopped playing folk songs on his guitar. “I think that’s what makes the Russian way of life so perfect,” pondered Luke discovering his second revelation. “Everything is done with good food, good company, and good music.” This is the secret to a good life, it seemed to us, both with bellies full, encouraging the words to a Beatles song that Diana’s father tried to play, mumbling along to the lyrics he obviously didn’t know. We were so exhausted, but it didn’t matter, because everything else was balanced and whole. We felt at peace with the natural world, breathing it in as we watched the sun already start to rise.