Slavic University, Part Two

To continue the tale of last Saturday....

Another thing I did during the morning, instead of sitting in on the classes, was to take the pictures of medieval Lithuanian leaders I'd printed on the color printer and glue them onto the tri-fold "school project" cardboard display. Of course, I'd vastly underestimated the amount of display "real estate" those pictures and their captions would take up. But, then again, I'm looking at this as a work in progress. I should make time between now and Pennsic to fill up the rest of the display board with additional maps of the changing borders of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, plus images of artifacts and reconstructed garb (such as it is).

While waiting for Sfandra to finish up her portrait session with Baron Bardulf, I hung out at with the folks at Troll (registration table). It was getting close to the scheduled lunchtime of 12:30 p.m., and Lady Marija, the autocrat (event steward), was starting to fret that she was going to have some huge holes in her afternoon class schedule if Master Mordok and his apprentice, Pan Zygmunt, did not show up from the Middle Kingdom. But, lo and behold, right at 12:30, a car pulled up and disgorged the two of them! That was a long drive from Michigan, through Ohio, and to the eastern panhandle of West Virginia!

For lunch I had cheese cubes, creamy potato soup, a mushroom tart, and some sweet bread. More coffee, too. Why, yes, I run on coffee -- I don't care whether or not it's period.

After lunch I decided to take Master Mordok's class on cloth shoes. He is experimenting with a way to make a simple cloth shoe made up of a sole and a wrap-around vamp. Of course, you put a leather sole on the thing, outside the cloth. Mordok was also interested in getting copies of our individual shoe patterns with our sizes marked on them, because he'd like to start selling them (kids going to college and all that...). We ran well over our allotted hour into the next hour, and even then intruded upon Pan Zygmunt's zupan class, but at least I could listen in while finishing up the cutting. I now have a pattern to fit my weirdly shaped feet and will have to start looking for suitable fabric scraps. I'm not anticipating that I would be able to wear such handmade shoes on a heavy day of Pennsic walking, but maybe I could make some cute lil' booties for indoor events.

Finally it came time for my class on medieval Lithuania. I got about eight people in there, including Igor and Fevronia; the former kept making his signature wisecracks. :-) I think it went pretty well, considering that I hadn't been marinating my brain in the subject leading up to the event. Afterward I collected my books and eggs and packed them in the car.

By the way, you can read the Slavic University lunch and dinner menus here. Sadly, I didn't see any sour cream, but both kinds of pierogies were excellent -- a little different in taste because they were made with buckwheat flour (not sure if they were 100 percent buckwheat or a mix with regular wheat flour). The pre-sliced kielbasa was also outstanding. Some people brought additional dishes, so there was a bit of a potluck going on, but I was slow to get to the table, so I missed the cheesy potatoes. Again, sadness.

After dinner, the shire members gave away some extra bread, so I ended up with a bag of some very dense sourdough slices. As the shire folks busied themselves with putting away furniture and cleaning up the site, I was thinking that I didn't get to talk to Sfandra enough during the day, and she and her friend from Rhode Island were inviting people over to par-taay in their room at the Comfort Inn. So I drove over there at dusk. Good thing Sfandra had told me that the Rite-Aid store was a landmark, because otherwise I would have driven right past the little lane where the hotel was hidden.

As it turned out, Sfandra and Katrina/Catriona had a great crowd in their room: Igor and Fevronia, Mordok and Zygmunt, and me. It was getting late and I was getting a little tired, so Igor and Fevronia graciously invited me to crash on the sofabed in their room at the inn. So I called home and informed my friend about this, and then I hit the krupnikas and the Stoli and the rum. *grin*

(To be honest, Shepherdstown is not right off the interstate highway, and I'm glad I didn't have to negotiate the twists and turns of unfamiliar two-lane state roads in the darkness.)

After watching the first few Tina Fey skits on SNL, I went downstairs and fell asleep like a log. In the morning, I certainly didn't have much to pack up. I washed my face, made one of those big round waffles in the "free breakfast" room off the lobby, and headed home in the brilliant sunshine, past the battlefield of Antietam and several adorable little towns.

Don't worry, I'll show pictures! But this entry has gone on long enough already. In the meantime, the Slavic University website has lots of links to photos.