Our first call today was to the Museum of Wooden Architecture (Malye Korely), which is about 25 kilometres from Archangel and again close to the Dvina River. A guide in local costume met us in the traditional way with Bread and Salt.
This traditional form of welcome is common not only in Russia but Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Finland, Estonia and Germany as well. When important, respected, or admired guests arrive, they are welcomed with a loaf of bread placed on
a rushnik (embroidered towel) and a salt holder is placed in a hole on the top of the loaf. Each person is requested to tear off a piece of bread – which is sweet – and to dip it into the salt. The bread is a sign of health and the salt, wealth.
I had encountered this welcome back in 1989 when I visited Moscow as part of the trade delegation. After this traditional welcome we were seated and invited to sample some mineral water, the Russians like their mineral waters. I had spotted that some of these looked positively radioactive so didn’t take a bottle at the time. There followed what I can only describe as a peroration from a General Manager of the office we were visiting. This was of course delivered in Russian without translation so somewhat lost on the assembled delegation. As we sat trying to look interested my neighbour nudged me and said, “Try of glass of ‘Nightnurse’” for in his hand he had a tumbler filled with a bright green mineral water!! I just collapsed with a fit of the giggles, that didn’t translate into Russia either!
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