Russia, February 16, 1998
Take a Break at Dom Odaha
I went to a sanatorium but I wasn't crazy
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This weekend, my division of Price Waterhouse went to a dom
odaha (rest home), for the weekend. A Russian rest home is not
where you send Grandma and Grandpa to chill before the long sleep, it is
more like a Western spa. They are hotels with all sorts of extras,
such as banyas, swimming pools, tennis, cross country skiing, games,
bars, and all the usual amenities, but usually without a specific
natural wonder (like a lake or ocean) nearby. Moscow has plenty of
rest homes around it, but they are usually far in the countryside.
Russian spa is for relaxing, nothing else. There are no meeting rooms like the West. There are no conventions, annual meetings, or business related activity even though most company employees go to a spa together. The workers are there to rest and party with their co-workers, not work. This is an odd notion to Westerners, and PW made a few employees mad when it tried to have the retreat as a long training session like any such activity would contain in the West. I really enjoyed our trip to the spa this weekend. My friend Theresa, who was visiting me from Florida, came along, as did most employee's friends and families. She and I spent a day playing in the snow, a new activity for two Floridians, making snowman, slides, and mayhem. We did run into a strange problem. In a country with snow six months of the year, no one had heard of snowshoes. I asked all my Russian co-workers, the spa employees, and the expats. The Russians didn't even understand why I would want to walk on the snow, and the expats had never seen snowshoes here at all. I don't think there is even a word for them in Russian. Sunday the expats spent the morning sledding. As most of us are from England, with a few random Americans, sledding was a new activity for us. We had a great time racing down the hills on high-tech sleds (or sledges as the English called them), as the photos show, and we spent the afternoon (and the next day) recovering from the morning's fun. I can't wait for our next trip to the dom odaha! |
