Дача (dacha)

It’s customary for Russians to keep summer homes in the country, where they can escape all the sad aspects of living in a big city. This weekend I got to go to the Orlov dacha, where I stayed two days and a night and met Babú (babushka, or grandma), Masha (aunt) and Andrey (uncle). I got more hugs and kisses from those people over my two-day stay than I knew what to do with. Actually, I just reveled in it. The second I stepped out of the car on Saturday, I was greeted with joyous Hello!s and a hug and kiss from Masha and Babú. My former notion that Russians are cold and distant and withholding of affection was clearly very much inaccurate. I’m now coming to understand that they seem to just take it more seriously here, or they think of affection as something to be shown in a private place, like home. Which I think actually has merit.

One of my favorite things about Russian culture is diminutives. Which includes nicknames. Fortunately, my first name easily comes out as the extremely popular name Katya (short for Ekaterina), so that has been my name ever since I came. (Mom would call me Katya when I was little, which made it kind of a special name from early on, far before I even imagined learning Russian.) So, being Russian, Katya comes with a whole bunch of other adorable nicknames: Katyush, Katyushka, Katyushenka, Katka, Katenka, etc. Babú called me Katyush (one of my favorites) at dinner the first night I was there. After I had eaten plenty of the beautiful meal (photo below), she said to the general dinner party, “Дай ребенку мясо” (Give the child [more] meat.) Love it.

So it turns out that Moscow is home to some of the most unexpected and fantastic thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. The first day I was here, I got a lovely greeting from a particularly heavy one while strolling about Red Square with some study abroad friends. The rain here has actually fulfilled intense childhood wishes for real rainstorms that never really came in Petaluma, or even later in Provo. So although it means sunshine one second and finding myself completely DRENCHED the next, I love it. This is relevant to the dacha experience because we got one such storm on Sunday afternoon. They (whoever “they” are) turned off the electricity for the whole area to prevent major disasters. I took advantage of the situation (storm, not power outage) by getting into my swimsuit and купаяся (bathing) in the rain.


Tonya and Nastya being silly and adorable on the way to the dacha.

Outdoor sink (plastic tank of water with a hole and stopper in the bottom). One of the things I appreciated about the dacha was the simplicity of everything there. They keep quite an impressive garden of vegetables and flowers, draw water from their own well, heat water for the little outdoor shower (pictured below, behind the sink) with solar power, and use this lil guy as a bathroom sink.

Garden. This is just a portion of the spacious property – there are also two greenhouses, several rows of cabbage and potatoes, a “summer kitchen” (small indoor kitchen and covered deck for dining), a barbecue area, fruit trees, and, of course, the dacha itself.

Dinner Saturday evening. Шашлыки (kebab-style meat), картошка (potato, this time mashed), and fresh vegetables. I tried raw green onion and salt for the first time that day. At first the idea sounded atrocious, but with some almost-черный хлеб (black bread – this was just a darker type of bread) it was actually pretty good.

Озеро (lake). Yep, walking distance from the dacha is a lake. We had a nice swim on Saturday between lunch and dinner.