When I first heard that I would probably join a wedding in North Ossetia, I started to investigate. Of course, I heard about the war in South Ossetia before. And other Russian counties in the neighborhood are not a good advice to travel to, too. The German embassy even warns about traveling to North Ossetia. But as for Nicaragua, we are too far away to properly assess regional conditions only based on some spectacular headlines in newspapers. And as I would travel with Russians who are as foreign in this part of Russia as I am, I gave it a shot.
We were 4 people and 1 cat in 1 car driving 25 hours non-stop (except for coffee and related pee breaks). Taking a cat with us was both entertaining and annoying at first. Because the cat had not seen anything else than a flat, it felt quite uncomfortable in the car. After the first hour, ti nervously peed in front of my seat. What a joy. After another hour it puked. After the third hour it realized that open car doors are a perfect chance to escape the horror of a car ride, so we spent each car stop with chasing the cat through the Russian pampa. But to my surprise, the cat adapted over time and used walks during the coffee break for natural needs and relaxed on our legs in the car.
I was curious about the roads. As you do not hear much about Russia's countryside, I did not know what kind of roads you can expect. Boring or not, it are normal roads, although they do not really deserve the label "highway" as you mostly have only one lane for each direction and the speed is limited to 90 km/h. I was told before, that Russian police would be corrupt. Scared by some ancient stories I took some extra money with me in order to bribe the one or the other black sheep in uniform. But of course, I based my expectation only on some details of stories. Because police is corrupt, that's true, but at least those officers who stopped us, they are not mean in any case. They did not take extra fee for accepting my valid visa. But you could buy a leak in their memory which happens to occur exactly at that moment when you exceed the speed limit. And when you have to travel 1800 km, you do it frequently. Luckily, we had an "Anti-Radar" warning us not only about each single camera at fuel stations, but also about police radar. Only one smart officer was hiding behind a small hill and pictured us right at that moment when we got over the top of the hill and the screaming anti-radar warned us too late. But other than that, Russian police or military was not more scary than those back home. Once we were checked by the police at on checkpoint, but it was not any different than traveling to Switzerland. Every 10th car was checked we just got "lucky" to be the 10th car. Nothing serious or shocking. Once we came across a real military checkpoint. We almost missed it, because the had not gate or blockade on the road. One soldier wore a huge semi-automatic sniper rifle. First I wondered about how you can efficiently make use of such a weapon when checking a car's trunk. That's can't be handy in close combat situation. But when we left the checkpoint, I noticed that the street was going plain and straight for at least 1 km with only grassland on both sides or the road. You better do not miss such a checkpoint, I guess...
The wedding took place in town called Chikola. I only learned the name at the last day when I saw the city sign on the road. Because like with every Russian word that I was taught, I could not hold the name in my memory for more than 10 seconds unless I read it. I learned the Cyrillic alphabet that much, that I can read it like a rookie in 1st class at school. Letter by letter, taking seconds for each letter to remember its pronunciation. Towns in North Ossetia, at least as far as I saw, are not as rural as you might expect. Water pipes are not underground and go from house to house. The houses look like well made farm houses and cattle is everywhere on the street. The interior is well furnished and only in taste different to Central European style. But no difference in quality and cosiness. Only the priorities on interior quality was sometimes surprising. We stayed a couple of times in a house with several extraordinary wonderful sleeping rooms, a huge kitchen with Bosch washing machine and everything you need for comfortable living. But other than living rooms, it had the shower in a kind of small stable and a pit latrine in the garden.
We took the car up in to the mountains several times. First time, it was Iliya, Alina and me. Our goal was to reach some snow, but the valleys are breathtaking and very broad that you make only a few kilometers per hour. You come across villages that seem to be far away from civilization, but still provided with small shops and bus connection. When we crossed the tree line, we spotted several old ruins on top of hills and small mountains. I cannot imagine that people lived on such meteorologic uncomfortable spots. And such ruins got more and more the further up we came (maybe also, because you could look further from higher point of views). Maybe such buildings once served as communication towers signaling danger or emergency from one valley to another. Some ruins were gathered on backsides of mountains one locations were you could imagine paths hidden along the peak in order to cross a mountain. Maybe such buildings gave shelter to travelers. But as I do not know anything about Caucasus Mountains, I have actually no clue, what I those buildings are about. On top of one mountain, we found an intact village surrounded by even higher mountains. The winds must have been that well for birds of prey, that we could see several vultures very close when the got up higher in the air looking for prey. When we got back to the low lands, we found the remains of a recent heavy hailstorm. Trees had fallen and the ground was covered by hail corns as big as marbles. We just missed the storm while being up in the mountains.
After the wedding, Alina and me borrowed the car for driving to a totally different part of the area. According to the street signs we got as close as 50 km next to the border to Georgia. And I know that at least I am not allowed to get too close to the border. Otherwise, I am thrown out of the country and won't get any permission to enter Russia in the upcoming 5 years. As we did not know how close we are actually allowed to come, we expected military posts before getting in any danger. And we did not see any post that far from the border, yet. Instead, we came across a town called Mizur. It must have been a town based on its iron or copper mine once in Soviet times. But the mine was closed and the town seemed to be forgotten. The town was not empty, but I could not identify any other industry than small (but at lot of) grocery stores. And occasionally you could spot old hailing Stalin portraits hanging in the windows. I read once before, that people in that area still worship the dictator, for he punished some ethnic tribe of the area which is part of the today's conflicts in Caucasus. That they do not realize that Stalin caused this conflicts by deporting those people, they do not seem to realize anymore. So they seem to fight without knowing the cause. But that is only my information. And as I learned during that trip, I must realize to be careful only concluded historic facts. As my information of history is well documented German history from 1930 on, other neighboring knowledge founds on rumors, half knowledge and gossip.
The wedding itself was a once-in-a-lifetime event, I guess. But I only realized it afterwards. During the wedding, I was busy trying not to make too many mistakes in etiquette and culture matters. 700 people joined the festival. Some people were responsible for the food steering enormous pots or non-stop baking of cheese-filled bread. They butchered a bull for that occasion and its head, neck and claws were put on the table like trophies. I tried to make myself useful as photographer. I got quickly famous. First because people thought I am the groom. But I had the feeling that I got then quickly got to be known as the-guy-who-does-not-speak-Russian. A grandfather frequently came to me and lead me enthusiastically to the table with the important men of the town. I do not know who there were, but I had to make pictures of them while they were drinking.
Drinking in Russia is different than in the stories. The only true thing is, that they drink Vodka. And yes, on weddings like that, they drink a lot. But I did not see anything ugly. Also the way of drinking is different to what I know. If I have a drink (let's say a beer), I cheer with my drinking buddy, take first zip, put down my beer and follow my own thought, watch the countryside or enjoy the atmosphere. While doing that, further zips keep in balance between relaxation and awareness of real world. In Russia, they seem to cheer, but they do not drink. Each zip seems to be introduced by a longer or shorter speech. And when the glasses kling, you most of the time put down the glass again and continue your speech. In the beginning I emptied my glass always after the first cheering, before I realized, I have to cheer with them a couple of times until the speaker finishes his wishes. Unlucky for me, I am incapable to follow any Russian. I recognize some words, but it rarely happens that I catch the topic of a conversation. So after I realized, I maybe should not drink as I would like to, I missed the cheers, because I could not differ between an ordinary storyteller and a speaker.
During the wedding, the bride was supposed to stay in her room during the whole afternoon. She was dressed in a white traditional costume of a coat and a hat. It reminded me a little bit of the pope. But she never was alone in her room. Guests were coming in all the time in order to congratulate her. Before she was allowed to leave, the groom at to go through some ritual, that I do not know the purpose of, but I can imagine it was some kind of "welcome to the family" ceremony. The oldest of the family and some uncles gather in the dinner room and everybody was holding a speech to the groom and drinking a shot with him. In the end he was fed chicken from the fingers of one of the uncles. Afterwards the bride was lead to some important man of the town who was sitting at the leading end of one of the tables. He was not the oldest, so I guess, he was the mayor or something. He also spoke some important phrases to her and afterwards we were finally all free to escape the stress of the ceremony. Before I could leave with the others to an hostel resort outside the town, I had to be careful not finally be drawn in to the vodka storage room, where some of my biggest fans were trying to introduce me to delicious tastes of commercial and home made vodka. But as we had only little free time, I did not intend to waste it with hangovers, so I insisted in denial.
On the 15th of June, we drove back to Moscow. Due to the celebrations (or maybe we missed the entertaining cat.) we were all tired and had to take some nap breaks. Coming back to Moscow took us even 28 hours. I spent further 4 days in Moscow where the actual wedding ceremony took place.
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