Hello Urs and Sasha! Such an amazing opportunity to know more about the "only world" we are having. We need it instead of beating around the bushes of political issues and discussing which system is better to live in.

Instead, we can just find more positive things to find the way how to improve our abilities and possibilities. Our past is not only the history but it is the place where we can return, find new things (we know that “everything new is well forgotten old”) and bring them back to our present and future.

And that is true not only for old-forgotten approaches but for all modern technologies those developed around the lots of inventions of our past. The modern technologies are great but, I am sure, that there exist the things which are eternal and they should not be replaced by modern materials and utensils.

There is nothing better and efficient than those old-fashioned Siberian houses equipped with a famous Russian stove. First, the wood is the healthiest building material. Second, it is the safest as far as it can resist any earthquake (once I witnessed how the logs of the Russian izba wall were trembling like the fingers of my palm when the strongest earthquake happened in our valley).   

And the Russian stove: there are few of them left here but I remember that one, which was used in the times of my granny Praskovia. She baked the tastiest bread I had ever eaten because there was a special technology developed through the centuries. The stews, soups, baked vegetables prepared in that stove were especially delicious. The stove was a universal instrument to use: it prepared our food, heated a house, dried berries, mushrooms, medicinal plants and even the wood for carpentry.

To cut my long story short, I have a dream. I would like to have such a stove in my new house. I have discussed the matter with my wife and she agrees with me. Now, I have to find a craftsman to build the stove and that is quite a task. Less and less people order Russian stoves and the technology is getting forgotten. The majority of people who built those constructions have died and there are less and less people who are eager to have ones at their homes.

There are people in Russia who do their best to preserve old crafts and traditions and I hope to contribute to that. Moreover, I started to do that. I try to return the tradition of making woven fences and to develop old Russian way of gardening – using high (warm) beds for growing vegetables. But this is the topic for another post.