Kostroma Local Customs

KBAC is the name of a traditional drink that you will still get in many places in Russia and on a hot summerday you really should taste it ! It is made from barley and rye, it is not extremely sweet, the ingredients are fermented and Kbac reminds me a bit of the alkoholfree "maltbeer" that we drank in the childhood.
KBAC / [pronounce it like "kvaahs" ] was the favorite drink of the russian population before C.Cola took over in 1989 and nowadays you get it in bottles as well, while I prefer to drink it from the oldfashioned KBAC-wagons, that you will still find in many parts of the country !

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Take a closer look at the houses in Russia and you will find out that there is mostly a bit of luxury at least around the window-frames of many wooden houses. All these materials like fresh and colorful paint and extra-woods were hard to be found in the old communiste times, sothis was really some sort of a luxury for many people !

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NObody in Kostroma took any notice of US coming to Kostroma, BUT everybody was anxious about Mr. Putin coming the next day to Kostroma, so everything was freshly painted and some streets even got the asphalt, they had been waiting for their dusty roads for centuries...
Did you take a closer look at my main photo : even the grass will be painted blue, when Mr. Putin is coming to town ;-)

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The charms of the communiste times can still be found in many places, when you walk around the town of Kostroma. The hammer and Scyth and also the soviet stars are shown in many public places, at lanterns etc.

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While strolling along Kostroma I was taking every advantage to watch local cats and dogs … You can see my shots here. I could compare them with German, Egyptian, Greek, Turkish cats and dogs and discover their similarity and difference… But all of looked very cute and I enjoyed watching them in Kostroma as well as in Berlin, Cairo, Athens or Istanbul…

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Like many other Russian cities Kostroma kept many street names from the Soviet times. The main street of Kostroma is called Sovietskaya Street, which betrays the fact that it’s not the original name and was given to the street after 1917. True, the original name was different. It was called the Rusina Street.
You’ll find there: Lenin, Dzerghinsky, Sverdlov, Voikov streets and others.

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Theodore Stratelates is a martyr and warrior saint venerated with the title Great-martyr in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is also a patron of Kostroma. His annual feast day is commemorated on 21 June (just that very day when we were in Kostroma). That’s why we saw the preparations to the feast day.

Amazingly, you can see all over Russia a variety of kiosks where you can buy all sorts of things. I often wonder how the vendors survive in the cold winters and how they manage to find a toilet. This shop sells eggs.