Mandrogi was burned to the ground in the second world war, and has been restored since. It's totally an artist village where all 150 inhabitants craft items for sale in the village. One nice thing is that everything sold there is handcrafted on site. No cheap made in third world country stuff that seems to flood the souvenir fairs lining the large monuments on St. Petersburg.
The architecture reminded me of Switzerland or Bavaria. And they has some charming horse-drawn carriages that looked reminiscent of sleds that were for hire to traipse around the island.
We didn't have time to take advantage of the 'real' horse power as Mama had a trip to the matrushka doll place complete with painting her own three-piece set, and I had a hot date, literally, with seven other women and a large, sweaty Russian teenager at the banya.
As it was, we had been given the wrong location to meet our groups and my watch must have been 10 minutes slow. I ended up running a quarter way around the Island to find the banyas (saunas) and missed the communal stripping of clothes. Bummer JR.
We eight women were schvitzing on two rows of cedar when the huge sado-machochist Sergei (I think his name was Sergei since John was certain I would meet a Sergei. He spoke very little English and primarily communicated with his birch branches) came in with a wooden bucket of water, a huge iron ladle and two clumps of birch branches. We all laughed a little nervously and seven of us were extremely grateful not to be first.
He first threw ladles of water into the fireplace and the water hissed and billowed. The heat was crazy and each time he swirled the branches around it intensified to stupid crazy.
Sergei began with the swirling of the branches, working his way down the line of us nervous, giggling, quasi-naked sweaty women, and then started again waving the branches closer to each of us down the line. Changing his technique with each pass, the branches came closer to touching us. By the time he changed the pattern of the swirling and the light tapping on our legs, it actually started to feel good. Pressing both clumps of leaf-covered branches against my chest, the heat from the branches seared right into my lungs and I could finally breathe freely for the first time since developing allergies after moving to Bton in 1980.
When we thought we could not stand another second of the heat and the sweat and the birch-infused air, he sent us out of the room to either have a bucket of ice-cold water dunked overhead or to run down the little pier and literally jump in the ice-cold lake. I chose the latter as I wanted to have control over how and when I was immersed in frigid temps.
Two of the Turner chicks were at the banya and they were naked under their sheet! They, another woman and I were the only ones to jump in the lake after the sauna so I saw naked 20-something Turner ass with no cellulite. Had I not already hated their youth, beauty and money, I would now. Not. Actually, they were very nice and laughed at all of my jokes. And one is emailing me a pic of the eight of us looking like bedraggled puppies after the first of the two rounds of sauna, birch branches, freezing cold lake plunge.
So Sergei comes to the lake after drenching the other half of the group and tells us all to move to the other side of the pier so we don't get carried away with the current.
Next, he sent us back into the banya for ten minutes of rest, tea or water and then we begin the process for the second time. And just as I was putting together the words я and плохо and выход which I hope mean "I" and "not well" and "exit" he opened the sauna door and out we oozed into the cooler air and frigid water.
With about fifteen minutes left to run to the ship, I made a mad dash into the largest shop and kamikaze purchased the last bit of gifts that I had been considering and hit the reception desk of our ship with five minutes to spare. We had been warned that this was the last place to do any real souvenir shopping as our next stops are historical and cultural and we don't have time in, nor does Moscow really have any such places, for this kind of shopping.
Credit cards safely stashed in the safe (to which I have not forgotten the combination yet as it is my house number and I share this with all of you close personal friends so if I do happen to forget it in the next ten days one of you can email me with it) and I doubt it will feel the cold, hard plastic of the little hand-held machine again until we head West.
Dinner in half an hour, by which time we should be thru the second of the locks we traverse today. My dad would have loved this part of the trip; I can't even count the number of times we had to stop at the locks on the Mississippi when visiting Uncle Mo in St. Louis, MO. Gads, that was soooo boring to an eight-year old. Looking at it from this side of 30, which is the age he would have been back then, I do see the magic in their concept.
Toodles.