Lifestyle Magick

Every now and then I write Posts with the Title “Travel.-Ing.: “. This title is a Denglisch=Germanenglish pun. “Dipl.-Ing.” is a title which stands for an engineer with an university diploma. So there are a lot of puns like “drink-ing” or “drive-ing” and “travel-ing”. Since I travel a lot for my work and to a lot of differenet places I found “travel.-ing.” quite fitting.

To travel for work is very different to privat travel, first of all you travel to places where a tourist will almost never go. Then you are not there for site seeing but for work and last but not least you work together with the locals for a couple of weeks or even month.

All in all I worked more than a quarter of a year in Russia, but I also work in a lot of different countries. Currently I work mainly in Sweden so maybe there will be a post about that soon.

The following impressions and pictures where taken from a visit to Galich (Га́лич) which is located in the  Kostroma Oblast area. To get to Galich, you can ether drive by car the M8 from Moscow to Kostromar where you cross the River Wolga and then onward on smaller roads in more and more deserted country side or you can take an over night train.

This was my third or fourth visit and we decided to go by car which was a good idea. My last visit was only 6 weeks before and then it was still snowing and cold, but this time summer had arrived and it was nice and warm. Just after Kostroma, we where taking a short break (Biological Reasons). There we wittnessed a beautiful display of Nature. Thousands and thousands of white Butterflies suddenly fluttered around us. Some died then and there on the ground, lots of others fluttered off. We  watched the whole natural spectacle  for a while before we got back on the road. The picture on the right shows this experience together with one of the Butterflies in my Diary.

Galich is a little town with maybe 50% wooden houses, 20% old Brickstone houses and the rest new Houses which are considered the best but look worst. If you are on a buisiness trip, you usually do not get to see much, but in this case the project took longer than usual and therefore I did spend quite a lot of time in Galich (in several visits and I saw all seasons). I had a little flat and after work I was free to roam the town, go shopping and do what however I please.

So here are a couple of impressions. The Windows of the old wooden houses are usually beutifully carved and painted:

The wooden houses do have a very romantic look, but some have no running water and the people need to get the Water from a Pump outside. Usually a nice vegetable Garden belongs to every house.

A hill in Galich allows for a very nice panoramic view over the Galich Lake. In the Winter the lake is full of men doing Ice fishing. The Lake used to have a connection to river wolga, but it is now too shallow to be used by boats. The old boats are dying wrecks near the shore now.

The beautiful church is right next to the old church which is more a ruin then anything else. Somebody attached a chimney to it and burnes coal. The new Church however looks very nice with its onion like domes against the setting sun:

The food was at firs not so very good, it took me a while to figure out that you best eat the very unindustrialized food sausage, cheese and bread make a very good meal. Russian mustard is really great and in this region there is a very special kind of black Salt which I am using now at home with great pleasure. In case of diarrhea I strongly suggest Vodka with (black)Salt:

I do work, which looks like this:

The way back I usually go by train. The train is just like the Transsibirian train just not as touristy.

The train arrives very early in Moscow and I usually like to drink a tea on arrival. Every wagon has a Samovar and you can order a tea in one of those typical and great glasses.

I hope you liked my travel impressions.

:.

~ by Otto on June 27, 2014.

Posted in Lifestyle, Technology, Travel
Tags: Russia, The doors of perception, Travel, Traveling