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Uglich

Uglich is a small town standing on the high bank of the great Russian river Volga for more than 10 centuries. We invite you to Russia!

RUSSIA: MUSEUM CALLED A VODKA LIBRARY OPENS

Russian/Nat

A new brand of tourist is taking Russia by storm this summer as lovers of Russia's national drink pour into the first ever specialist museum of vodka to be opened in the country.

The museum, called a vodka library has opened in the tiny medieval town of Uglich, on the banks of the Volga river.

Authorities hope hordes of vodka lovers will boost the town's flagging tourist industry, famous for its monasteries and the murder of the son of Ivan the Terrible.

All is quiet on the banks of Russia's ancient Volga river.

In Uglich, 250 kilometres northeast of Moscow, time stands still and history is all around.

Boats like the Karl Marx have seen better times, bringing in total around 200-thousand tourists to Uglich every year in Soviet times.

Now the numbers are dwindling to as little as 80-thousand annually in a town of just under 40-thousand.

But history is giving the town a helping hand again.

Passengers disembarking at Uglich can now visit Russia's first ever vodka museum.

As they knock back the region's own brand of vodka, visitors to the library are told how vodka courses through the veins of the ancient town.

Grirgory Smirnov, uncle of the founder of the famous vodka brand, was born and raised in Uglich, opening his first vodka tavern in the town in 1835.

Monks at the local monastery made bread wine from the late seventeenth century.

Now the museum houses around 500 brands of vodka from 60 distilleries spread all over Russia.

The aim, says museum founder Viktor Minyaev, is to teach Russians the pleasure of drinking vodka in a cultured manner after years of little choice and limited supplies during Soviet times.

SOUNDBITE: (Russian)
Just because you have sex doesn't mean you get venereal disease. It's an essential part of human life. If we have such a culture, it doesn't have to lead to illness. It's the same with the cultural consumption of this drink (vodka) - it won't necessarily lead to drunkenness.
SUPER CAPTION: Viktor Minyaev, museum founder

As drinkers down the shots in the museum, they are watched over by an icon of St Boniface - the patron saint of drinkers they say at the vodka museum.

All over the world religious foundations were often centres of alcohol production.

And Uglich was no exception.

In the Alekseyevsky monastery, monks made bread wine from 1639 say the history books.

The present inhabitants of the now dilapidated monastery are nuns.

They need all the financial help they can get to restore their church - it was turned into an apartment block for several families in the 1920's.

Now, the nuns are thinking of how to make money.

Some people may be making money out of Uglich's alcohol history, but not them says mother superior Miropiya.

SOUNDBITE: (Russian)
I've heard about it (the vodka museum). But I don't think it's something for women, it's men's business. So I don't think we'll be doing anything like that here. We have to do more church things, nearer to the church.
SUPER CAPTION: Mother Superior Miropiya, Alekseyevsky monastery

Back at the vodka museum there are no such qualms.

The sound of clinking glasses is heard all day as tourists like Valery Kostyev from Moscow enjoy what is a unique institution in Russia.

SOUNDBITE: (Russian)
There isn't even anything like this in Moscow. Not everybody wants to visit churches, or old sights. So we need new, modern, unusual things.
SUPER CAPTION: Valery Kostyev, visitor

The churches have stood in Uglich for over six hundred years.

The vodka museum has some catching up to do, but, so far, there is no shortage of visitors looking for a different kind lesson in Russian history.


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