Sweet Church OMG CATS

Last weekend, we all went on our first excursion – a trip to Valaam. Valaam is a grouping of islands on Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe. Primarily, it is one of the holiest sites in Russia. We set out on the Alexander Suvorovsky, a cruise ship-like thing. The boat had a restaurant and two bar/club things. The trip involved overnight transit there, a day on the islands, and overnight transit back. I thought I would have gotten motion sickness but the ride there was incredibly smooth. The cabins were small and the toilets were those weird German shelf-toilets (didn't handle toilet paper either).

In the morning we went on a hike of the big island where our tour guide showed us the various churches on the island. Our tour group was in Russian and I understood everything up to the point when I stopped paying attention. The hike reminded me how much I like being outdoors, away from cities. Having spent most of my time over the last five years in Minneapolis, this was a refreshing escape.

The scheduled item for the afternoon was an excursion to the actual monastery on Valaam. The monastery is one of Russia's oldest and to my understanding, is pretty well populated with monks and temp monks. We took a smaller boat from the bigger boat over to the monastery and the ride was nauseating. Not only was the rocking sickening, there was an audio-tour happening over the speakers in Russian and English. The Russian sounded like the the Metro (think, teacher from Charlie Brown) and the broken Runglish did not help the nausea.

Believe it or not, visiting monasteries and churches is not one my favorite things to do. Sometimes I feel like once you've seen one Russian Orthodox Church, you've kinda seen them all. I know there are the iconic ones that you MUST see, but in general, iconoclasts are iconoclasts. Plus, there were people actually praying and lighting candles and kissing glass-covered icons while we were there, and I feel that our three groups of 30 people were interrupting what was probably a rather important experience for them.

Regardless, there were cats on the island, and cats fix everything. Every time my group passed a cat, our attention immediately fixated on the cat. The tour guide could have been spinning plates on a unicycle, but there was a cat, and that was more important. And because there was a cat, all warnings and advice from orientation flew out the window as many people pet and picked up the cats. I did not, because ring worm and fleas suck.

That night on the way back home, I went to the nightly discotheque on the ship. A pint of Tuborg for 50 rubles? Yes, please! Woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and went home. Rush hour on the metro=never again.