tsaritsino park and the honey festival

It was the most amazing weekend.

On Saturday we went to the museum of the great patriotic war (the second world war). It has a room called the Hall of Sorrow, which had 2,600,000 tear-shaped crystal pendants hanging from the ceiling - one for every 10 Russian soldiers that were killed in the war - and big leather bound books listing all their names. A very quiet, very beautiful place. And, as a mark of respect, parked outside the museum were two enormous white limos for two separate wedding parties, each complete with outrageous Sobranie-smoking meringue-bride and weedy new husband posing drunkenly against the memorial obelisk for photos. Everything about this was tasteful and appropriate and I hope to see many more tacky wedding receptions at similar venues around Moscow – in cemeteries, perhaps, or outside a hospice.

…apparently I'm supposed to be writing about Sunday. Philip's going to write about Saturday. Oops. We're such a well-oiled blogging machine.

So. As I was saying. Sunday. It was a glorious day. The birds were singing, the sun was shining. Philip, Felicity and I all hopped on the metro and made our way to Tsaritsino park, home of Tsaritsino Palace and the annual honey festival. It occurred to us as we came out of the metro that this might have been a terrible idea. For one thing, there was no park there - just a massive junction, a petrol station and an industrial estate. It was stop-a-stranger time and I was nominated.

'Excuse me, please,' I said in my best Russian, 'where park?'

'Forward forward,' he replied, and so we obediently followed his pointing finger for a long, long time, until finally, we saw crowds of people disappearing into a tunnel. There was nothing to do but join them and when we emerged from darkness, crushed and blinking in the light, we saw a sprawling, magnificent park, glowing in the sunshine. We've either found it or died, I remember thinking, but then I saw another tacky wedding reception and meringue-bride posing for photos and decided we were still in Moscow. Hooray! To the honey festival!

Except I only knew about this festival because a) it had been advertised in the Moscow Times online as 'On until October, or until the honey runs out!' in an article written in 2008, and b) someone at work said it might be on. Couldn't find any other information about it in English. Moscow: not really a place for tourists. But Felicity, who is the second most optimistic person I have ever met, was convinced it was there, and that we'd find it. It was stop-a-stranger time and Felicity was nominated.

'Excuse me please,' she said in her best Russian, 'Where honey?'

'Forward forward,' the lady replied, pointing towards a huge mass of yellow tents in the distance and people drifting away from it carrying bags of honey jars and looking really shaky. SUCCESS!

It was absolutely incredible. There must have been thousands and thousands of different sellers, each with their own twenty or so different types of honey, depending on the species of bee, the flowers that grew locally, the strains of pollen.. and everyone was so keen for us to sample as many as possible, clear and watery, yellow and buttery, slightly citrusy, one that tasted like green fruit pastels (according to Felicity), one that tasted a bit like brown bread (also according to Felicity, who obviously has a very developed palate), one so thick and dark it looked like treacle and tasted abnormally tangy. One that just looked like loads of dead bees crushed into a paste and put in a jar, which tasted like death and brought back terrible memories. And there we were, with our little white plastic sampling sticks, for hours and hours, dipping away, loving it.

That was until about 4pm, when we realised that we hadn't had any breakfast or lunch and that all we had eaten all day was honey, and that the only food we had with us was the jars of honey we had just bought for a million roubles each. I suddenly felt unsteady. Felicity was pale. Philip looked especially dreadful, since he'd also had an entire pint of kvas, the favourite drink of many Russians and not found anywhere else in the world because it's too, too disgusting.

We drifted away from the honey festival carrying our bags of honey and looking really shaky, and wandered up to a café in Tsaritsino Palace where we ate weird meat-filled brioche rolls, too weak to care what the meat was, or even what Tsaritsino Palace was. I think it was a very impressive building. I don't really remember.

I haven't eaten anything sweet since Sunday, or as the press are now calling it, 'honeygate'. It's too soon.