Zaveleva, Russia Travelogue

Zaveleva

Завелявa

Zaveleva, Udmurtia

December 21, 2004

Yesterday I went to a camp outside of town with a bottle of wine, an Englishman, and six Russians. The bus station in Izhevsk was busy, with long lines, and mud covered floors. There were also numerous taxi drivers walking around trying to get people to take a taxi instead of the bus to their destinations. We talked to a couple cab drivers, but prices were too high so Nick got tickets for himself, Seth, Alexei, Vitariya, and me.

After buying the tickets we went to the other half of the building, the relaxing hall to wait. Here we bought chocolate and snacks as people came and went; the floor got wetter and stray dogs occasionally made their way in.

Before we left, Anya, Alcy, and Lillian arrived and got tickets. At about 1:25pm we went outside to line number 6 with the name Zaveleva. We were repeatedly yelled at by the old people; two or three were just screaming that we couldn’t sit down on the bus and we had to wait, so we waited. We stood for the ride, about an hour drive southeast and the bus was terribly dirty, and over crowded, which seems to be standard.

The third stop we exited and there was nothing for, well as far as the eye can see, other than our camp sign. We weren't actually in Zaveleva, but that was the closest village to where we were. For the first time I felt part of the Urals, the area consisted of large rolling hills, mostly covered by trees. The road ran off into the distance in both directions. The north side of the road was all trees, except in the distance to the east, where on a hill was a small village of wooden houses. On the south side of the road were trees about 500 meters away, but otherwise it was just open fields filled with snow, untouched by anyone.

We settled in and said we were students so only had to pay 130 rubles instead of 250 plus another 80 rubles for food. The camp looks like an old army barracks but in reality was a pioneer camp. We had two rooms to sleep and another to put our stuff in, which locked.

After lunch we played soccer and went sledding for a long time. We tried to play pool, but they have only one table and it was full. After this we decided to relax, but no one brought cups for our wine. As in Russian tradition some people gave us cups so long as we had a drink with them, so we each had a shot of vodka.

After a short while, we went back outside to go sledding and here met a number of people, who gave Seth and I more vodka, which is rude to turn down in Russia, to welcome us to their country.

After dinner, we noticed that someone broke into our locked room, but didn't actually take anything. As we were working with the camp owner, a Russian wanted to arm wrestle Seth and I, I beat him, Seth didn’t, but for some reason it became a huge ordeal and the entire building was watching our arm wrestling matches.

Once the new locked room was organized, we went back outside to explore the area and the fresh snow fall. We found a box of gas masks left over from the communist times in case of biological warfare, so Nick and I tried them on. We then went for a walk in the woods, only lit by the moonlight, there were trees everywhere and we came across old abandoned buildings, that were white and only open from one side. After entering the area you were in the middle of a circle and could enter any building from here. Each was built into the ground and was only one story tall: all white concrete. It seemed like something you’d see in a movie where you’d go in and be ambushed. After seeing the virgin snow going only deeper into the woods we turned back.

Back in the housing building Seth and I learned a few Russian superstitions including not whistling in a building and always shaking a bottle of vodka before opening it, because back in the days, there was “bad vodka” and so they had to mix it up until it became tradition. My Russian friends said it would be nice to offer the people on our floor vodka, and fortunately, Nick brought some. So we shook the bottle and had another drink with our new friends.

It’s tradition to toast while drinking and to have some sort of food; we had croutons and chocolate. You only toast sometimes though.

We woke up early the next day to head home and I learned another unfortunate Russian tradition: drink vodka the day after partying because it cures the hangover.

So we paid for our rooms and went to get the noon bus, but I felt so strange, we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing for miles, and were standing in this vast land trusting a bus was going to come by and stop for us. It was a very strange feeling; the bus arrived, at which time we got on and paid our 20 rubles each and were off.

It’s very odd because in the US when you take a bus its from city to city and there are always houses between, or stores, but here there are only a few sporadic villages and it has stops in the middle of nowhere, or anyplace they see a person looking for transportation.

These places/people are so far removed from the world, yet buses are running three times a day on a road that hosts no one but a lot of oil trucks.