Greetings Friends! I failed to write a post last month, so this month you get an extra long one. Yippee!
In previous posts I’ve mentioned my awesome landlord, Otto*, and his daughter Marie*, who owns my apartment, yes? Over the summer they invited us (my boss, his wife and me) to their summer/ancestral home several times, and in mid-September we finally went!
It is only 168 miles away but takes 4.5 hours to drive due to the lower speeds required for traversing switchbacks and mountain roads. Coloradans know something about that kind of journey.
We left the city around 8:30am, picking up Marie on the way out of town. Despite GPS, we were going to need her to direct us on the final stretch, and she wanted to visit her parents anyway. We found out that Otto and his wife Eileen* have been there since March, and usually stay through the end of the grape harvest. Lots of city folk leave during the hot summer months, escaping to the mountains and family homes.
When we arrived, Otto gave us a brief tour, then we sat down for a late lunch. Lunch included fried fish (gutted, but including heads), bread, meatballs, potato salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cheese. My boss and Otto can both speak Russian, so most conversations were in that language, with my boss translating every so often. Occasionally, Otto switched to the local language when speaking to Marie or Eileen. Sometimes I understood, sometimes not. At one point, Otto said that I should marry a good local boy and stay here (he happens to have a grandson just a few years younger than me) to which I said, “If God wants.” Otto replied, “God wants.” We all laughed at this, and it was my turn to translate back to English.
After lunch Otto showed us more of the area, including the community vineyard. “Community” in the sense that on the same plot of land everyone has their own rows of grapes, and is responsible for their care. Grapes are a national past-time here.
Then it was nap time. Which was much needed after the long drive, large meal and walk.
Later that evening we sat with Eileen as she prepared bread and stuffed rolls for dinner in the out-door/summer kitchen. She did so using the traditional oven – a clay barrel. The barrel is first heated by burning large sticks and branches in it. Once the wood burned down, Eileen covered the ash with scrap metal, whisked the inside out with a towel (to get rid of any residual embers) and then slapped the bread to the inner walls using a cloth-covered paddle. We ate the bread as soon as it came out, almost too hot to touch.
This, we found out to our chagrin, was not dinner. After a good half-hour of feasting on fresh bread and rolls, we went inside for the real meal. Needless to say, we were already pretty stuffed, and really didn’t desire more food. But we ate anyway. Chicken, mushrooms, potato salad, and more bread.
Imagine how you feel after Thanksgiving dinner. Only even more full. That was us at the end of this meal.
Around 10pm we called it a night. It was all I could do to stay awake that long.
The next day’s breakfast was fresh grapes and left-over rolls. If you are on a carb-free diet, this is not the country for you.
After breakfast, we headed to the community vineyard to harvest some grapes. We collected 100kg in about an hour, and I learned that 2kg of grapes make about 1L of wine. After another lunch very similar to the first, we packed up and headed home. It was a pretty awesome weekend.
Other tidbits from the trip:
There were three chickens running around when we arrived, but only two when we left.
We drank water fresh from a well. As in, there was a bucket, and a pully, and that's how we got the water.
My boss got hit on the head by a falling pear.
Harvesting grapes is a sticky business, but lots of fun.
We came home with boxes of fruit and nuts and instructions to hang bunches of grapes on our balconies. I hung mine off the struts that hold up my AC unit.
We pretty much have the best landlords in the city.
*Names changed