Shopping in Stavropol - Two Russias

Today is our first day of waiting. Well, actually we've been waiting a lot over the past year, but this is our first day of waiting in Stavropol. We slept in. We needed it. We're still not completely over the jet lag so it's been hard to sleep at night when your body thinks its the middle of the afternoon. After breakfast at the hotel (it's included and is a relatively good spread... see the post from our last trip in July), we did a little homework. Luke worked on Language Arts today and Beth read about the Spartans. After that, we went shopping.

Shopping in Stavropol is a great example of the contrasts we see in Russia. In the area immediately surrounding our hotel it looks like Easton. There are a lot of boutique type shops and designer labels. Everyone in this are is VERY label conscious and they will save for months to buy a designer outfit and then wear it almost every day. We haven't shopped in these shops much on this trip... we've been saving our rubles for the important stuff... like ice cream. We walked about a mile from the hotel and went shopping in the "other Russia", the one where the normal Russians shop.


It was an open air market with lots of little booths where people sold everything from tools to clothes to food. There are lots of Russian high knee, high heel boots that all the young women wear. Beth isn't impressed. Luke liked the camo jackets and pants. We bought tonight's dinner at the market. A really good looking loaf of bread (11 rubles: 40 cents), 2 apples (20 rubles: 72 cents), 5 small oranges (25 rubles: 91 cents), a small jar of fresh honey (40 rubles: $1.45), and a really good looking cake... the desserts here are really good (80 rubles: $2.90). We'll supplement it with stuff from the room as needed. We took a few photos of the market andLuke would like to add some comments:

LUKE: Smoking is bad, but everyone here thinks it's hip. People smoke everywhere and all the places we go to smell like smoke, even the hotel room. At the market we bought some really good thin bread (Dad's note: think flour tortillas that taste like fresh white bread) and ate some of it while we were walking. Meat is sold different than in America. Instead of being in a refridgerator, it's hanging on poles or just laying on the counter.
The also have fish. Some are still alive in a tank. When you buy them, the seller pulls them out and kills them by smashing their brain with a hammer and then cuts them up for you. We also saw a skinned head of a cow sitting on the counter (see photo). It had horns attached, eyeballs still in their sockets, the fur was still around its nose, and Beth was really freaked out by it. It was awesome.