Krasnoyarsk - Part 2

Our last few days in Krasnoyarsk, produced a fair amount of activities as we try to include all of what this city has to offer in a very short period of time.  We could spend weeks in the city and surrounding areas and probably not touch on a third of activities and sights.  But with our time constraints and the program the Rotarians have put together for us we certainly have done an outstanding job seeing all that we could.

Our first day was filled with professional meetings in the morning and trips to the local art museums in the afternoon/evening.  Mark and Joe also got a nice treat by taking a trip to a local businessman’s warehouse to view some vintage motorcycles that he had rebuilt!  Most were old German war bikes complete with side car and machine guns.  His aim is to keep them as authentic as possible so they all were equipped with Nazi paraphernalia. He further noted that the machine guns were fully operational.  He would not allow us to test for true authenticity.  However, he also has taken an interest in American Motorcycles and has reconstructed a few vintage Harley Davidsons.  The most notable was a 1936 which was brought over by an American Cargo pilot during WWII and had been rotting in a Russian garage until only a few years ago. He had received the bike in pieces and has it almost completely restored. It was quite impressive.

Following our trip to the warehouse, the evening brought us to a church built in 1910 (or at least reconstructed at that date, we were unable to read the plaque) for a recital style performance from three beautiful Russian women whose talents consisted of  a Soprano, Alto and a flutist. We were thoroughly impressed with these young ladies talents and enjoyed such Russian opera songs accompanied by the pipe organ. We certainly took in the significance of the event, sitting in a old Russian church listening to opera ballads on an old pipe organ.

The following day we accompanied the Krasnoyarsk Rotarians to an opening of a park they had constructed for the local hospital children. This is the second park they have completed in the past few years and was quite a step up from the previous park these children were playing.  Words could not describe.

But perhaps the highlight of the entire week was Chef “Povar” Andrew performing on a popular Russian TV show in Krasnoyarsk. He prepared a Gazpacho and some seared Salmon as an entree which was picked apart by some local celebrities to see if they could determine the ingredients.  They did a good job but I think everyone was in agreement that Andrew had stepped up to the plate,  performed flawlessly during filming and certainly will provoke these Russians to try and duplicate his meal.  We all thoroughly enjoyed sitting through the taping of this episode, which took a total time of about 4 hours for 20 minutes worth of material! It was well worth it though, if not just to watch Drew then to watch the director, cameramen and our faithful Rotaract translator hard at work.

Before we knew it, it was our send off dinner once again.  The Rotary club gathered for another meeting and we were presented with gifts and warm heartfelt toasts as we went home to pack our bags for our journey the following day.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to build relationships and as soon as you really seem to get to know one another and the laughs start flowing, it is time to move on to the next city. It is well worth it though for if we did not have this program these would be individuals we would never meet and most likely places we would never see.  Off we go to the next city, Novosibirsk, to build new relationships and make the world just that much smaller.