Petrozavodsk

This week we have the opportunity to travel with President and Sister Rawson on one of their visits to outlying Church congregations. We have come to Petrozavodsk in the Russian northwest.

But first, earlier happenings in the week.

Ken's birthday! He's getting to be quite the old man--but a wonderful one, for sure. Our District meeting on Tuesday began with a mini-celebration.

We had balloons and "slamming." We've mentioned that before--drinking herb tea through chocolate-covered cookies so that they get all soggy. We'd love to know who invented this tradition.

Tuesday evening Ken went to the mission home down the block to work with President Rawson on some financial stuff, and Sue hosted some sisters from Center Ward for a special project. This coming Sunday is "Father's Day" in Russia. February 23 is always "Man's Day" which is the short version of "Defender of the Fatherland Day." It's a combo of Father's & Veteran's Days. Since Russia has universal military service for men, all the fathers are also veterans. Anyway, the women came to make some special gifts to hand out to the men at church on Sunday. We took old church magazines and cut out small pictures, sayings, etc., and laminated them into bookmarks. The mission office has a small laminator, so Sue brought that up to the apartment and we had a great time--followed by tea and cookies and cake.

Wednesday Sue walked down the street to run a few errands and had to take a photo of this big billboard by the entrance to the subway.  National elections are on March 18.  The caption reads, Strong President, Strong Russia!

And we also see these posters all over both St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk.  They say at the bottom, "Our Country, Our President, Our Choice." We like the way they do the date at the top-- "2018 March," because the election is on 18 March. 

The rest of the week was pretty quiet, until Friday morning when we piled into the mission van with President and Sister Rawson, Elders S. Jensen and Franckowiak (Assistants), and Kostya as our driver. It's a 5.5 hour drive northeast about 265 miles to Petrozavodsk.  

Out the front window of the van you can see a logging truck. There are many, many along this route. Wood products make up a huge industry in Russia.

And of course Ken took dozens of photos of the countryside. It was good to be away from cities and traffic to see the unsettled beauty that is most of Russia. Here are a small sample.

We arrived in Petrozavodsk before 4 pm and went to the hotel to check in, then drove with everyone to the church building. (This isn't it.)  Just down the street from our church is the main Russian Orthodox cathedral of Petrozavodsk. It was built in the 1830's through donations from the cannon factory workers. It is named for Alexander Nevsky, because there is a tradition in Russia that any city with a church named for Nevsky will never fall to an enemy army.

Friday night we went to dinner (oops, forgot to take pictures) at a restaurant called "Кужня" which means Kitchen. They have all kinds of food from pizza to hamburgers to steak to wok to sushi. We were 14 people! Elders Adams & McOmber and Sisters Pitt & Eaton (assigned in Petrozavodsk); President & Sister Rawson; Elders S. Jensen & Franckowiak (Assistants to the President); Sisters Camano & Mohlman (up from St Petersburg doing exchanges with the Petro Sisters); Kostya (driver and Counselor to Pres. Rawson); and Kristina (a wonderful young woman in Petro Branch.) The favorite item on the menu for most of the group was Cherry Dr. Pepper!!



Saturday we went out to sightsee.

First we went to view the snow and ice sculptures. Last weekend was the big International Winter Festival in Petrozavodsk, but they leave up the sculptures until they melt. There are a bunch of them along the lake shore. We even walked out on the lake and watched the people doing kite-pulled snowboarding! So now there are lots of photos to show!

Fish and waves.  Loved the movement

Same with the dancers -- you can feel them move.

 Some of the sculptures were made of snow and some were made of ice blocks carved. It was so cold that the snow wouldn't hang together to make a snowball, so we are not sure how they did these amazing sculptures.

Sue's favorite -- hard to tell, but it's an angel kneeling.
Her wings are amazing!

The whole crowd of us:
L-R:  Elder & Sister Allen, Kristina, Sisters Eaton & Pitt, Pres & Sister Rawson
Elders Adams, McOmber, Franckowiak & S Jensen

The one on the right is titled "Nutcracker" complete with ballerina,
tree, rat & the little nutcracker himself.
You can see the whole row of ice sculptures going down the line.

After we saw the sculptures, the group split up to each do their own thing -- and we were on our own. We walked through the downtown area to get to the two museums we wanted to see, but we saw this sign on the way. We are far away from everything! These are distances to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Crimea and Vladivostok

Our first stop was the museum of the history of Karelia, the province where Petrozavodsk is located. It's a great small museum with artifacts from pre-historic times up to 20th century. 

In the US people do Civil War re-enactments. In Karelia they do old battle re-enactments, too.  

Ken tried to join the battle, but that headdress is really, really heavy! We don't know how they ever fought wearing one of those.  

In one room they had a model of the parlor of a merchant family from the 19th Century. This game of Tiddly-winks was on the table--in English, made in London.

Our next stop was the Petrozavodsk Industrial Museum. It has artifacts from the factories of the city--the cannon factory, the tractor factory, and the ship building yard. There were also some hands-on activities for kids demonstrating laws of physics. Most were things we had seen before, but Sue had never played with coupled, matching pendulums. It's an interesting phenomenon. Here's a video about how it works--the first two minutes.  

Ken liked this demo about how the molds for cannons are made.

After we left the museum, it was a beautiful day and we decided to walk along the river and go see the musical theater. We came upon the city soccer field which had some kids playing soccer at one end on the snow with a black ball.




But the most interesting part was rest of the field which was laid out in a 50 yard long field with two teams of grown men playing American football--complete with all the helmets and pads and referees and down markers, etc. Don't they know that football season is over?



Also nearby is an outdoor ice skating rink--nothing fancy. No walls or fences, no Zamboni in sight. No skates to rent or kiosk selling hot drinks. Just people out skating on the snowy ice surface.






And then we came up out of the river ravine to the sunshine on the musical theater building. We looked into going to a performance, but the only show available was a puppet show for kids at 11 a.m. on Saturday, and we'd missed that one.

Petrozavodsk is on Lake Onega, and our hotel is on the shore overlooking the lake. Our room has just a peek at the lake, so Ken took this photo from the front side out over the lake just before sunset.

We had dinner with the Rawsons and Kostya in the hotel restaurant and then went out to look at the snow and ice sculptures lit up for the night. The ice ones were even more spectacular because the lights show off the details of the carvings.

It is cold outside, but we ended our day in a warm bed.