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| Climbing a windmill |
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| Driving a cart |
Back in 2010, when I moved 3 times in two months, I had to pack and unpack and carry so many things that this experience still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. My sense of humour has always come to my rescue, so when last September, while visiting an open air museum in Yekaterinburg’s vicinity, I saw this cart that stood by a windmill I knew what to do. As Ringo Starr would sing, “all I had to do was act naturally”.
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| Riding a cart |
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| Holy water well |
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| A piglet in the rye |
Shortly before that, after visiting several wooden houses, I was so tired that I literally dropped into another cart’s seat. As you can tell by my face, it was a moment of sheer bliss.
The windmill you see me climbing is one of the historic mills built without a single nail. The open air museum has been lovingly created by a local historian and his wife from 1960s onwards. It contains several wooden houses that showcase the attributes of everyday life in the Urals, a church, a windmill, a prison, and a fire station.
In 2010 I got to walk for a bit and to touch the wheat ears in Essex; almost exactly a year later, in 2011 I was gleefully rolling in the rye fields in the Urals. “The piglet in the rye” is a toy I brought to a friend’s daughter.
And after visiting the open air museum in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha I was taken to a monastery in Verkhnyaya Sinyachikha, where in 1918 in a shaft died the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna and several Great Princes from the Romanovs family. We tried the monastic apples, very sweet, and then we went to the holy water well. I drew a full bucket, which apparently means that I shall be a good bride to my fiance, when it comes to that.
A geographer I came to know last year told me that I should like the Southern Urals because the region resembles Wales. As for me, I crave to visit the Hermitage in St. Petersburg…