Rustam proudly recounted the story how he kidnapped his wife – an ancient Caucasian tradition by which a man can just rob a women he likes from the streets, take her home and marry her. While this practice is less common nowadays, it is still quite popular among the peoples…
Month: Thursday May 16th, 2019
Maga is from Nalchik, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus. He took us for a ride through downtown Nalchik, confident to impress with speeding up to 130km/h. In fact, he was doing some of the riskiest overtaking manoeuvres I have ever seen, including almost driving…
Malkhas is a Yazidi living in Pyatigorsk in the Russian North Caucasus. When we were driving with him, he played cutting edge electronic music with Yazidi and German vocals. In fact, like many Yazidis he speaks pretty good German. A large number of his countrymen have traditionally been seeking refuge…
This friendly Babushka (grandmother) is originally from Poland. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the country’s east was annexed by the Soviets and in 1940 her family was deported somewhere to the north of Russia. Her father was a singer and suffered terribly as he was missing Poland. Later she married a…