Horses

One thing I'll never understand is how people just pop up in Krasnoyarsk. It makes me wonder what I did with my life for the twenty years before I came to Russia, because I can tell you exactly how I know pretty much all my friends in England. English friends are the sorts of friends whose relationship to you can be summed up in a single sentence. Friend from school. Friend from uni. Friend from choir. It's like English friendships are always formed on the ruthlessly logical basis of which institution you suffered through together.

Yulia is not an English friend. She is a Russian friend. She is the co-worker of the mentor of my Interra colleague Zuzana, and she offered to give me a guided tour of the art museum adjacent to Interra's office back in November. Then I bumped into her in a supermarket near the flat where I used to live (but also pretty near the flat where I now live), and we worked out that we live(/d) in the same neighbourhood. Then she organised a skating gath (as you do in Siberia) just before Christmas, and we made lots of plans for cool little day trips that we wanted to do after the New Year. One of those day trips was to her dacha outside of Krasnoyarsk, where we wanted to go riding in a one horse open sleigh (o'er some fields of snow, obvs). This plan was realised with Russian efficiency just after the New Year, when Zuzana, Yulia, and I packed into Yulia's dad's car and set off for their dacha.

After about two minutes of driving, Yulia noticed what trousers I was wearing, and made her dad turn the car around, drive me back to their flat, and lend me his industrial grade arctic dungarees. She was shocked that I'd had the audacity to intend to go sleigh riding in ordinary winter trousers. 'I TOLD YOU TO BRING VERY WARM TROUSERS!'
'These are very warm trousers!'
'NO! They're just WARM! Not VERY WARM!'
Yulia's habit of speaking with caps lock on scared me slightly, so I quietly took the very very very big dungarees of shame and we got back in the car.

Yulia's dacha was in a village in the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk. I can't remember the name of the village, but I remember Yulia's dad explaining as we drove through it that 'it's where Olympic champions and some rich people live'. I wondered how many Olympic champions there were in Krasnoyarsk. And rich people. I also wondered how they'd all reached the consensus of moving to a this precise tiny village. Interestingly though, people who I've talked to about the horse riding afterwards have often asked me 'what was the village called?' and I've always responded 'I can't remember, but Yulia's dad said it's where Olympic champions and rich people live', and they've always gone 'ohhhh that place! Yeah, I know the one.'

The Russians have this really cool word: недостроено (nedostroeno). It comes from the verb 'to build', but there are two prefixes at the beginning modifying it. The first prefix is ne, which means not. The second prefix is do, which means completely. When you throw those three things together and turn them into a (kind of) adjective, you end up with 'notcompletelybuilt'. It's used to describe constructions which have been started but not finished. I think it says a lot about Russia that this word is so necessary. Yulia's dacha was nedostroeno, although it was much closer to being dostroeno than some other dachas I've visited. I remember back in November, a friend's dad gave me a tour of his dacha, which can only be described as started.

It was going to be a magnificent dacha, he assured me. The tour started in the basement, because that existed. There were shelves fitted down there, groaning under the weight of rows and rows of cognac and preserved vegetables. Clearly they had their priorities straight. It did go somewhat downhill as we went upstairs, though (pleasingly). The ground floor was... a floor. A concrete floor.
'Ok so you can see the door will be juuuuust here. It's gonna be a fully-functional door. Might fit a bell. There'll also be a coat rack I guess. And some rooms. Anyway let's go up to the first floor.'
We went up to the first floor.
'So this floor is also gonna have rooms. Come over to this corner here. Right here we're gonna build my younger son's bedroom. It'll probably have a bed in it and stuff. Or maybe just a sofa.'
We moved to the other side of the floor.
'So what we're walking through now is gonna be a corridor. And it's gonna lead to this...' he gestured grandly at a concrete space.
'This will be my daughter's room. As you can see it's going to be preeetty spacious. Well actually you can't see. Just trust. Let's go up to the top floor. Now be careful, because we're getting pretty high up and there's no banister on the stairwell, and also no lights haha. So try not to fall down three floors!'
'Ah, here we are. The top floor. This will be my eldest son's room. It's gonna have a beautiful balcony with a view over a field. Oh yeah we've got to make the field too, but all that good stuff's gonna come soon enough. We're just working on the electricals and the door for now really.'

In comparison, Yulia's dad's dacha was pretty cosy. It didn't yet have heating, but it had an enormous dog (heavier than me) which was also really angry, so running from that kept you warm. There was also a TV. No beds yet though. What they did have was lots and lots of food. I'm actually starting to really like pickled cucumbers, which is just as well because they're ubiquitous in Russia.

But before we'd had time to dostuffourfaces, our chariot arrived. The dog let us know by barking so loudly that I almost wet myself. Outside the gate were three beautiful horses and a rickety wooden sleigh. The sleigh driver lived in the village, and the service included being picked up from your house. Yulia's dad gave me a concerned look. 'You're shivering.' He said. 'No I'm not!' I said, truthfully. He took off his enormous jacket and threw it over me. 'There. You need it more than I do. I've got a TV in there', he said, gesturing back at the dacha. Then he went back inside and we bundled onto the sleigh. It was more a big plank of wood with a backrest than a sleigh, really. We were lying more or less at ground level. It was also a bit too narrow for three people, so I had to lie on top of a crossbeam which was jutting out, and ran down the length of my spine between my shoulder blades. Every time we went over a bump I risked breaking my spine. That spiced up the ride a good bit!

The mummy horse pulled the sleigh, and her two babies ran alongside us joyfully (I think they were joyful, they might have just been terrified of abandonment). We went around the village once and then out into the fields. It was really fun. Being close to the ground gave us a good sensation of speed, and as we swung round corner after corner in the village, I imagined myself as Pierre Bezukhov from War and Peace rushing to see his dying father. Then I noticed the cold. In spite of my numerous and very thick layers, it was starting to feel a bit nippy. There were two blankets on the sleigh, and the three of us agreed to throw the top one over us to keep warm. It didn't work. The second blanket was presumably there because there was a lot of rabbit poo on the sleigh under it. We decided against throwing it over us, and kept it between us and the sleigh. It was our feet that lost feeling first. I was wearing thick socks and fur-lined winter boots, but it was a matter of minutes before I lost all feeling in my toes. After another twenty minutes, I was starting to doubt that I had ever had feet. We decided to risk the rabbit poo, and threw the second blanket over us.

To spare you the having to endure the pain that I suffered, I won't give you a detailed account of how time passed and we all ended up so cold that we were on the brink of tears. I think it was the first time since I arrived in Siberia when I thought 'oh. This place is actually really cold. Huh.'

Then the sleigh broke, which didn't raise the mood much. I think we all really enjoyed the beauty of the ride, but we were still grateful when we got back to the dacha. Yulia's dad wandered out with a couple of loaves of bread, a bag of carrots and a box of sugar. We were all dying to get inside a car or something and warm up, but we decided to stay and feed the horses to thank them for our ride. The sleigh rider pointed out that the baby horses had never had sugar before. Sure enough, they just dropped the sugar as soon as we put it in their mouths. If we held out the sugar cunningly disguised under a hunk of bread, they'd eagerly eat it, start chewing, and then just let the food drop out of their open mouths with a look of pure loathing as they realised the dirty trick. Apparently horses need to learn that sugar is tasty. The sleigh rider showed us how we had to feed them so that they understood sugar was tasty: you need to take your glove off, break the cube, and rub it into their lips as they eat it so that it all gets to their taste buds. I tried this once or twice and then the horse saliva started freezing to my hand and I tapped out. My gratitude has limits.

As you can see, I was in desperate need of some more layers