So I'm become convinced that, although the official currency of Altaiskoye is the ruble, were some Greenspansky in charge of the Federal Russian Federation Reserve of Russia to discontinue it entirely, Altaiskoye could do just as well with its current unofficial currency: berries. Being located in the far south of Russia -- almost on the border of Kazakhstan -- the Altai region has an excellent climate for growing almost anything, and, being in the middle of zhopayob Russia (my extremely vulgar translation for "bumf***"), everyone here has a garden that they tend, if not an entire farm or nonadjacent piece of land that they also cultivate. Nevertheless, so many different types of fruits, especially berries, grow wild that, apart from merely living off the bounty of their own gardens, people go out and pick fruit too. As a result, in the summertime, when everything, both wild and domestic, is ripe for the picking, people gorge themselves on berries and give them to neighbors, loved ones, or people they want to thank. The streets almost seem to overflow with fresh berries! I've even seen people giving berries to their dogs, not to mention all the children I've met who'll just go and hang out in the garden or climb a tree and eat berries till their bellies swell and their teeth turn black. I have to say, there's something I find very natural and comforting about this custom, which, like many of Altaiskoye's simple pleasures, sometimes makes me feel like I've stumbled into some sort of Western Siberian, Twilight Zone version of Mayberry (only, in The Twilight Zone, this would be a commie plot ending in my disaster).
And let me tell you what berries I've had! In the course of a mere two days, I ate: strawberries, wild strawberries (which, as shall be explained, are entirely different), blueberries, raspberries, golden raspberries, black raspberries (which I had previously suspected to be an conspiracy of the frozen yogurt industry), gooseberries (which Maddie and I had tried for the first time only two weeks hence and which apparently have two or three varieties), black currants, red currants, white currants, cherries, golden cherries, and something called cheryomukha. Although my dictionary translates this word as "a type of cherry", in my opinion, it's nothing of the sort: tiny and dark purple-blue, cheryomukha has pits almost the size of the entire fruit. It grows on a very tall tree in huge bunches and has a slightly sour taste, turning your teeth sticky and black if you eat too much. Bear in mind, these are only the berries I've seen in the short time I've been here. I suspect that there are even more out there, likely also never before even witnessed in the US of A.
One day, the parents of one of my students (the one who created that no-good Zhenlandia, in fact) decided to take me, Natalya Mikhailovna, and NM's niece Katya with them to collect wild strawberries. We headed beyond Altaiskoye, beyond the even tinier village Kamenka (which even Altaiskians regard with a certain snobbism), and beyond all civilization entirely, driving through the hills until we came to came to a large lake, named "samolyot" ([air]plane), because of its long, bewingиd shape. As the car came to a stop in a grassy field atop a wild hill with a sky-blue lake in the background, I thought to myself, "I almost feel like I'm in a car commercial -- only we're driving a shitty Nissan." Nevertheless, if I closed my ears (not quite as easy as closing one's eyes), I could easily imagine myself to be in the middle of Montana, where we were hauling boulders up a hill or performing some other such Sisyphean task manly enough to be worthy of a car commercial. But, alas, we were to be picking berries in a field of chamomile flowers (you can make tea yourself!), an activity which, I had to admit, wasn't helping boost my machismo too much.
That being my first thought, my second was: where are the berries? I had expected bushes or something fairly distinctive, but all I could see was grass all around; it seemed like we'd have to walk a ways before we got to any actual berries. Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case. We walked a couple paces, and then Natalya Mikhailovna stooped down and, out of nowhere, pulled up a tiny red berry. "Here," she handed it to me, "wild strawberries." I stared bemusedly at the pinkie-nail-sized berry, squinted for a moment, and thought to myself, "well, I'll be... I guess it is a strawberry." Wild strawberries, it turns out, are much smaller and pinker than your garden variety, with a stronger, sweeter taste, and they grow in small clumps quite low to the ground, so that we had to brush back the grass in order to see them. Nevertheless, the whole hill was covered with them... you'd have to try extremely hard not to crush some with every step. By sundown, Natalya Mikhailovna and I returned home with a full bucket of wild strawberries, which we were all too happy to add to the vast collection of other sundry berries that lined the kitchen in pans, jars, and bowls. In a place like Altaiskoye, it's almost as though it's raining berries, and you're just rushing around, grabbing every container to try to catch them.
And let me tell you what berries I've had! In the course of a mere two days, I ate: strawberries, wild strawberries (which, as shall be explained, are entirely different), blueberries, raspberries, golden raspberries, black raspberries (which I had previously suspected to be an conspiracy of the frozen yogurt industry), gooseberries (which Maddie and I had tried for the first time only two weeks hence and which apparently have two or three varieties), black currants, red currants, white currants, cherries, golden cherries, and something called cheryomukha. Although my dictionary translates this word as "a type of cherry", in my opinion, it's nothing of the sort: tiny and dark purple-blue, cheryomukha has pits almost the size of the entire fruit. It grows on a very tall tree in huge bunches and has a slightly sour taste, turning your teeth sticky and black if you eat too much. Bear in mind, these are only the berries I've seen in the short time I've been here. I suspect that there are even more out there, likely also never before even witnessed in the US of A.
One day, the parents of one of my students (the one who created that no-good Zhenlandia, in fact) decided to take me, Natalya Mikhailovna, and NM's niece Katya with them to collect wild strawberries. We headed beyond Altaiskoye, beyond the even tinier village Kamenka (which even Altaiskians regard with a certain snobbism), and beyond all civilization entirely, driving through the hills until we came to came to a large lake, named "samolyot" ([air]plane), because of its long, bewingиd shape. As the car came to a stop in a grassy field atop a wild hill with a sky-blue lake in the background, I thought to myself, "I almost feel like I'm in a car commercial -- only we're driving a shitty Nissan." Nevertheless, if I closed my ears (not quite as easy as closing one's eyes), I could easily imagine myself to be in the middle of Montana, where we were hauling boulders up a hill or performing some other such Sisyphean task manly enough to be worthy of a car commercial. But, alas, we were to be picking berries in a field of chamomile flowers (you can make tea yourself!), an activity which, I had to admit, wasn't helping boost my machismo too much.
That being my first thought, my second was: where are the berries? I had expected bushes or something fairly distinctive, but all I could see was grass all around; it seemed like we'd have to walk a ways before we got to any actual berries. Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case. We walked a couple paces, and then Natalya Mikhailovna stooped down and, out of nowhere, pulled up a tiny red berry. "Here," she handed it to me, "wild strawberries." I stared bemusedly at the pinkie-nail-sized berry, squinted for a moment, and thought to myself, "well, I'll be... I guess it is a strawberry." Wild strawberries, it turns out, are much smaller and pinker than your garden variety, with a stronger, sweeter taste, and they grow in small clumps quite low to the ground, so that we had to brush back the grass in order to see them. Nevertheless, the whole hill was covered with them... you'd have to try extremely hard not to crush some with every step. By sundown, Natalya Mikhailovna and I returned home with a full bucket of wild strawberries, which we were all too happy to add to the vast collection of other sundry berries that lined the kitchen in pans, jars, and bowls. In a place like Altaiskoye, it's almost as though it's raining berries, and you're just rushing around, grabbing every container to try to catch them.
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