Memories from Childhood – drinking tea

the stars

One of good things I remember from my childhood – tea drinking. I’m from Estonia, but my grand-grand mother and g.-g. father

lived in a village in Ukraine, it’s 2000 kilometres away from Estonia. But we all are russians anyway, at least partially. Each

summer me and my parents were visiting them for about one month.

It’s usually quite hot outside in Ukraine,  in the summer, even in the night time. In the evening, after a day of hard work in the

field or a day of having fun and adventures with friends, we  all were getting to one table in the front yard. A part of a  big

family and friends, usually about 10 people or more.

Women were preparing food for supper, men were firing up the ovens (ovens there are using firewood) for heating russian sauna,

called BANYA. Also they were putting special thing near the table, used for preparing the tea – it’s name is SAMOVAR. Here is the

link about it form Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samovar. They have similar things in Turkey and Iran.  The SAMOVAR has a

medium size metal container for water, it has a small platform for firewood in the bottom, so when you fire the wood up, the water

in container starts boiling, so you can make tea. Black tea is usual for those places. People, who lived most of their lives in the

USSR are used to black tea, ’cause it was very popular there. Though I prefer green tea now, memories are still alive and I take a

cup of oldtime black tea sometimes to refresh those sweet pictures of a childhood.

happy family with Samovar

Now, imagine such picture

In Ukraine, it’s getting dark very fast, at about 9 o’clock. After going to sauna and having a supper, there we were, at the

table in the yard, in the darkness, having one small lamp as a source of light.

And darkness around.

And an adorable sweet smell of flowers on the trees and relaxing smell of a burning wood in samovar and oven nearby.

And crickets singing\making noise  in the bushes.

And the brightest stars in the sky, like it the desert. And the moon sometimes. If fire in the samovar is still burning, it is

giving a small light, which is very romantic. All people are relaxed and having a good mood, because they are a bit tired, they

have full stomaches, they went to sauna and now have a slow, sleepy talk to eachother. And they are drinking tea.

In such atmosphere you can understand other people better. It melts people’s souls and minds and puts them into one.  It’s a real

unity. And even if there is someone new at the table, you feel like you know him for a hundreds of years.

It’s almost like being in nirvana, I think.

I hope to see it all some time later, again.