Dacha is the suburban summer house, and majority of Russians, if can afford,  have one.

Our relative brought us to her dacha which is located approximately 50 miles from her apartment in Moscow.

Many people take a local train from  train station in Moscow, called ‘vokzal” to their dacha.  Then after approximately one and a half hour ride, they arrive to the station/ village of their destination.  From that point, they either walk or take a car to reach their summer house.   We were lucky to get a ride from door to door.   The drive there was such experience!  The traffic, quality of roads, cars, drivers’ facial expressions….

We arrived to dacha, the beautiful house built from the wood. 

Huge backyard, berry bushes, flowers, mushroom forest, fields with wild flowers, little river, organic goat farm nearby.

All was perfect accept the mosquitoes.

The famous Indian mosquitoes are nothing comparing to their Russian “relatives”.  Russian mosquitoes are huge, nasty, find you everywhere, and bite, bite, bite ….  I was bitten so badly and was counting hours when we are going back to the city.

We spent 6 days at dacha enjoying all that was given to us by our host and the nature, realizing again and again how lucky we were to live 24 years in suburbs, in the western comfort next to the beauty of nature! So many small lives’s pleasures were taken for granted…

Speaking of things taken for granted: cell phones and easy access to the fast and reliable internet.

In Moscow we bought two SIM cards for our cell phones and two internet modems (flash cards). The modems are inserted into USB ports of our laptops to connect to the Internet from any part of Russia.  The SIM cards for our phones are from the MTS service provider. One modem is connected to the MTC network and another to the MegaFone.

The cost of two SIM cards (unlimited calls in Moscow area and 3 GB phone internet access) plus two modems (3 GB data/ea) was around US$80 for one month.  We also have the ability to upgrade the plan if needed.  In the US we paid $140/month for two cell phones (700 min, 2GB data) and over $60/mo for very slow DSL line.   In Moscow, the internet connection is OK (just OK), however coverage in the suburban areas is soooo poor, that it takes hours to retrieve email and absolutely impossible to post anything on Facebook.     Since we are spending majority of our time in Moscow, we choose not to upgrade the Internet coverage and stay with the bandwidth we have selected.

The things we bought so far in one of the most expensive cities of world are not as expensive as we though, and this is very encouraging.    I’ll post the prices separately.

What to do at dacha?  Walk the dog (if you have one), go to the forest to pick up berries and mushrooms, then cook the berries and mushrooms, take care of the house, read, watch TV, visit local towns, etc.  And this was exactly what we did.

In a few days we will be going to Samara, the city on the banks of Volga River to see my other relatives.