Got up and had tea, cookies, and candy for breakfast. André showed us a handmade religious day-book that has been in his family since the 17^th century. His grandfather was the last person in the family who could read it because it was written in Old Church Slavonic, sort of a cross between Cyrillic and Greek. His family had lost many of their possessions as they moved East and later evaded the Soviets, but they saved the book because of its religious significance. It will be a greater challenge to get it out of Russia if they decide to emigrate to the US.

Then we all went to a museum of the natural and cultural history of Novokuznetsk. It was pretty interesting if not extensive. There were stuffed animals (bear, lynx, fox, eagle), bugs, plants, and fossils. It also had some ancient artifacts and medieval armor, models of Soviet apartments, and WW II paraphernalia. There was a model of the automatic tunneling machine used in the coal mine and a model of a railroad tank car that transported molten steel inside the steel mill. The latest exhibit was a tribute to the men from Novokuznetsk who had died in Chechnya. All of this was in a hallway about twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long, not much bigger than a standard size gift shop in most museums.

Outside the museum Alla bought me a contour map of the Tashtegal area (roughly equivalent to an American county) in the Kemerovo region where their dacha was. It showed all of the little villages in the area, almost down to the individual building, as well as rivers, railroads, and the elusive footpaths that passed as roads. It was fascinating to all of the Russians who saw it because maps of such detail were outlawed under the Soviets.

After a lunch of cabbage, chicken, and salted cucumbers, we went into town to buy food for the dacha. Some of the store clerks use abacuses (abaci?) to calculate totals. We wandered around for a while then came back to the apartment, showered, ate some soup and went to bed at 10:00.