Day 160 | Some lessons in Tver

Day 160 | Sunday August 22

The Babushka’s treated me with even more fruits, vitamine C and herbal tea. I started to feel better. Today they took me for a tour through Tver. Hundreds of years ago there was a battle between Moscow and Tver about which city would be the capital, so it’s a place with much history. The river Volga flows through the middle of the city and has it’s spring nearby. The famous poet Pushkin has 2 statues here and also Lenin has one. There are still some small reminders about the Soviet Union times, in the heart of the centre can be found an old theater from that time.

Tver has 400.000 citizens which they consider not much people for a city in Russia. It is quite, nice and interesting to walk through. The woman had a lot to tell about it. One monument reminded of the 1.400 people that died on submarines during WWII. They had no idea why this was placed here as there was no submarine base nor any other relation with submarines.  

Yesterday I asked them if they knew anyone who could cut my hair. My hair became quite long, it came over my ears and to the back of my neck. They immediately took all their phones out of their pockets and started making phone calls. They couldn’t find one but offered to pay for a barber today. So we did. I showed the barber some pictures of the model I prefer and I think she managed to cut it like that, I feel young again.

Sustainability

I tried to talk with the woman about what they think about sustainability. They didn’t really understand what it meant and after I described it with some examples they understood but apparently it’s not really a issue in Russia. Tanya told that she thinks about it sometimes but hasn’t really started to work on it.

A problem in Russia is clear drinking water. It doesn’t come out the pump here at homes so you need to buy it at stores. Some people use the pump water to cook, others don’t. Some companies installed water supplies on the streets, for a cheap price (4 Ruble or €0,05 a liter) you can refill your bottles here. The company claims it’s pure drinking water but most citizens don’t believe this and buy bottles at the stores.

Pictures of today