Shrooms is the order of the day and we wake up at 5.45am don our forest gear and proceed to grab a bus out to the forest. Once there I get the low down on what mushrooms you can eat, which ones will make you ill and which ones will send you off a journey of another sort. Igor's dad comes out to the forest early to pick, as lots of old men and women come to the forest and gather the mushrooms and they live near by so if you arrive later in the day, they will all be gone. He also tells me that in the morning the grass is still wet and so he can easily see where other people have been and picked, so he can find the spots which haven't been touched. We end up gathering 3 bags of mushrooms and Igor finds an absolute beast! I manage to stumble upon some kind of mushroom holy ground and harvest a collection of beauties right at the end, which fills my bag out nicely. We are dressed for the occasion and among our items we have over boots, made by Igor's dad from Russian radioactive/chemical warfare suits. Safe!
We get back home at around 9.30 and clean all the shrooms and cut them up. The big ones are massive meaty buggers as big as my hand and look amazing.The next task of the day is to get what Igor called the true Russian experience and have my visa registered. We get to the police station just after 3pm and end up leaving at about 6.20pm. The details are too long to go into, but it involved a mass of forms photocopies, queuing, confusion, unhelpful people, helpful people and letters written on my behalf. An interesting experience.
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