A Trip to the Coast

A week and a half ago Nikolai and Galina, my neighbors, were kind enough to take me down the coast on a Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we left after I got back from church. Our first stop was a "holy" spring in a small town, Varvaravka, just up and over the hill from Su-Pseh. The spring had been blessed by the Orthodox church and the waters are supposed to have some healing properties. There is a small shrine set up next to the spring with some flowers and icons. Nikolai filled up some water jugs while Galina and I took a quick walk up to the new church that is being build above the spring. I took some pictures of the church, the cow, and the spring.

Our next stop was a viewpoint looking out over the sea, near a war memorial. The memorial is for a captain Kalinin who successfully repelled the fascist invaders (presumably with some help) during the Great Patriotic War. The Nazi's did lay siege to Novorossiysk down the coast for most of a year (300,000 people died), so the locals here were understandably pleased with the good captain. Traveling through Russia you will find war memorials in every hamlet, village, and city and along each road in between. They're everywhere. They're well kept and always adorned with flowers. Everybody here lost somebody in the Great Patriotic War, it must have been horrific. America is very blessed in that we haven't had a war on our own soil (excepting Attu and Kiska) in 150 years.

After the memorial, we piled into the growly Lada and went to Bolshoi Utrish on coast. It's a beautiful little spot. Nikolai and Galina come here fairly often and come to swim here during the summer to get away from the tourists in Anapa. We walked along some trails for a little while. There is a huge cliff here that is said to have been the cliff that Prometheus was chained to in the ancient Greek myth. It was also incredibly windy, I'd guess a sustained 40 mph (I think that's 2000 km/h). There were many windsurfers playing on the waves. We walked around the point for a little while, near the Delpinarium (the dolphin circus, as Nikolai calls it), and out to the lighthouse and chapel. A beautiful Sunday afternoon, if a tad bit windy, and it was a lot of fun hanging out with Nikolai and Galina. They're wonderful people, I'm very blessed to have them as landlords. They're coming over to my place for dinner tomorrow night, I'm making hamburgers. I hope that they'll attend church with me sometime.