In the heart of Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city, grows an apple orchard hundreds of years old.
This unique place (unknown in any large American city) has different names: "Museum of the Middle Urals Fruit Gardening," "Fruit Gardens Museum of Central Ural Mountains," or what the label on the side of the house in the orchard, says: "The Museum of the History of Fruit Horticulture in the Middle Urals."
You get the picture: It's got fruit...and beauty, besides!
Whatever the name, it's an oasis in the middle of a bustling, industrial city (not far from the new Boris Yeltsin Center), and there are plans to uproot the very old trees, plants and farmhouse.
It seems that the owner, the government, plans to sell the property for more lucrative use (shades of the western world!). It's a controversial topic which the curator (pictured) has been fighting probably the whole nine years he's been curator. He was a energetic fellow who talked non-stop to my guide (and I may have been lucky that I do not understand Russian).
Being a preservationist, I do hope the government leaves the property alone for entering the grounds takes you on a trip to another world, an earlier century where the greens and soothing environment can calm down almost anyone. It reminded me of Monet's garden which I've never visited, but I've seen his work, and perhaps Monet came to Yekaterinburg to paint.
I had wondered (and so did my guide) why my tour company would take me to an apple orchard, but when my expectations are low, I have learned, they are always exceeded, and they were!
This is another world not to miss in modern-day Russia.
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