Hannah and I spent the entire hour’s sleep we should have gained from the time change talking. This morning we visited the edge of the lake and saw a famous monument to unity between the Udmurt people and Russia as a whole. Izhevsk is the capital of Udmurtia and this year celebrated the 450th anniversary of inclusion in Russia. There are celebratory banners all over the city and most feature two girls, one in traditional Russian attire and one in Udmurt national dress. It impresses me that after four-hundred-fifty years of unity, many people in Udmurt still recognize theirs as a separate and distinctive culture. Sadly, in the capital, the banners are the only ostensible proof of this distinction. The buildings and fashions are pretty much the same as in other Russian cities.

Following our walk we took the bus to a Pentecostal church. It was one of the strangest places I’ve ever been. Although I haven’t actually been to a Pentecostal service in the US, this certainly did not fit into the stereotype I have of them stateside. The building was huge architectural anomaly situated in the middle of a chunk of meadow with trailers parked on the overgrown grass. Heavy, imposing—the way a church might look if crossed with a corporation’s headquarters.

As uninviting as the outside was, we made it inside and found that the building is far from complete. Although you enter at ground level, it is cold and dark with the exposed concrete walls of a basement. You snake your way through two-by-four pillars and the husks of future classrooms and nurseries and then climb stairs up to the second story where the sanctuary is only slightly more finished. We sat near the back of the auditorium on one of the top tiers of wooden risers. Most of the folding chairs were occupied, but we found seats. Their building has been under construction so long, they may reach capacity before the project is complete. I was impressed by how much pride they have in the space. Behind the pulpit they draped some pastel gauzy fabric even though the wall is not completely finished. They put their time and effort into finishing the exterior, making an impressive monument to catch the attention of those driving past, before investing in the commodities that will make their own lives easier, like better heating and insulation (I wore my coat the whole service and almost put on gloves). Click here for pictures.

The choir wore powder blue polyester robes and sang pieces I didn’t know with easy listening or soft rock accompaniment. It seemed to me that there were two sermons and both stretched far past my attention span for anything in Russian without pictures, but the majority of people around me listened raptly, and there were a lot of people around me. The church must be doing a lot of things right, even if their taste in music and choir robes doesn’t quite fit with mine. No matter what the circumstantial differences, it’s always encouraging to meet dedicated Christians here. After years of state-imposed atheism, truly spiritual people are sometimes hard to find.

In the evening we visited the Kalashnikov museum. The AK-47 was invented right here in Izhevsk and they’re proud about it. So proud that they decided, “Hey! Let’s put a shooting range in the basement so people can understand first-hand the beauty of these weapons.” Well, Hannah and I don’t quite understand yet. We didn’t hit anywhere near the target, which is a shame because better marksmen get a printout of a bulls eye and how close their shots came. Kalashnikov Museum Pictures