Sunday, October 5, 2008

Mushrooming

Today I tried another very popular hobby in Novosibirsk: Mushrooming. It may sound like I was just passively growing mould and funghi on my body, but it is in reality an activity that consists in picking mushrooms. It is done in the forest, at the fall season. I thought everything worked pretty much as planned... we found a forest (not very difficult around here)... but I did not realize that October 5th is already the end of the fall season under this latitude. So we did not find a single mushroom. Still, I had decided that this post was going to be about me picking mushrooms, and I was not going to give up that easily. So we took a picture of me acting like I am picking a mushroom in the forest. Then, I blew in a plastic bag to pretend I had a full bag of mushrooms, and I showed it to the camera. The best part of the day was when I was offered lunch by an expert mushroomer, who picked his mushrooms a few weeks ago, and opened a can of mushrooms just for me.
I hope this proves skeptical people that I am not wasting my time here in Siberia and that I always find something constructive to do with my week-ends.



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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

im here because of few cents for you. just dropping by.

Anonymous said...

Respectfully sir and not meant as a criticism but true curiousity.....

I read a lot about Chernobyl and mushrooms and was wondering how that event may have affected mushroom picking. Is your city near there?

Bruce Lenorf said...

If Chernobyl may have affected mushroom picking? It depends whom you talk to. Some mutants would tell you it is definitely easier to pick mushrooms with their third arm, while regular people like me think it is unfair competition. I hope I answered your question.

Ian said...

Yes. Very constructive indeed.

Anonymous said...

Anyway with plastic bag it was fun))) M.F

Anonymous said...

C'etait VRAIMENT tres interessant...

CO

nadinoschka said...

I love your way of writing!
You not finding mushrooms but acting as if you did just enlighted my day in sunny Berlin. :-)
Talk to you soon.

TRAVEL said...

I love your blog!